Skim is a story of young women and misunderstanding, of challenges to compassion and walls against love, of the gulfs between death and alienation, of all of us stumbling ahead nonetheless. Insecurity is near the heart of Tamaki's characters who casually lash out and judge the behaviors of difference, but it is an insecurity nonetheless paired with longing. There is no clear path to love, and tentative overtures are as likely to be lost as tragically fulfilled.

While the stark black and white illustration work complements the bleakness of the story and the divisions between characters, I wondered at points whether greyer tones might better represent the quiet quests of these students against the public performative nonsense the mainstream offers.

Tamaki takes on the misunderstandings we have as people, not merely adolescents, around our discussions of suicide, of enmity, of community. And we must not expect pat or final answers to any of it; quite the opposite. We just keep moving forward as best we can.