Bad Friends is a dark, haunting semi-autobiographical story of a South Korean middle schooler named Pearl, and her friendship with a "bad girl" Jeong-Ae. Together they run away from home, smoke, drink, and endure horrific beatings from teachers, parents and boyfriend-pimps. The art is powerful and the translation by Janet Hong conveys nuanced moments of warmth amid the blood and pain. I did find it a bit hard to follow which girl was which for the first half of the book given hairstyle changes, and some of the time shifts also confused me.