You Belong Here

A young adult graphic novel following Essie through heartbreak, star-crossed romance, teen drama, and the question on every high-school senior’s lips: where do I belong? It’s the first day of senior year and seventeen-year-old Essie Rosen is already over it. Her best friend went off to college and barely responds to her texts, her brother’s on the other side of the country in rehab, every conversation with her mom becomes a fight, and her long-term boyfriend, Bruno, feels weirdly distant. Essie’s counting down the days until she can escape her Long Island hometown and join her bff at NYU, where she’s SURE she’ll get into the acting program she’s dreamed about for years. But when Essie gets dumped AND botches her college audition, her entire trajectory changes. Instead of doing community theater, she ends up slumming it in the school play, where she’s cast opposite the unexpectedly charming Christopher Sun the younger brother of the drug dealer who got Essie’s brother hooked. Is he the perfect rebound—or the worst decision Essie could make?