I Hated You in High School

“Gros, best known for her “Sort Of” series of YA adaptations of classics such as Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, offers up an LGBTQ+ romance for adults with much of the same cozy charm. Tessa, an underemployed art school grad in Vancouver, is ready to give up on dating when she learns that her high school nemesis, Olive, is back in her hometown and renting the basement apartment in her parents’ house. Having repressed the specifics of her awkward teenage memories, Tessa can’t recall exactly why she hates Olive, “but I do remember that she sucked.” When the two are thrown together to help plan Tessa’s parents’ anniversary, Tessa is forced to dig into the past and face the fact that, in the present, she and Olive are falling for each other. Gros’s simple, pleasantly rounded artwork has the feel of casual sketches, an effect that works well in the high school flashbacks, which are presented as doodles on notebook paper. Though the story dips into dark subjects like teen bullying and homophobia, for the most part it’s as sweet as the wedding cake the leads sample in one cute vignette. Romance readers looking for an enemies-to-lovers story without much dysfunction will root for this couple.” (Publishers Weekly)

Kathleen Gros is a cartoonist living in Vancouver, BC. Her most recent graphic novel Anne: An Adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (Sort Of) was released in 2022. Her other works include Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) (HarperCollins 2020) and Last Night at Wyrmwood High (Cloudscape Comics, 2015). She has contributed stories to several Cloudscape anthologies including Fantastic Frights, The Witching Hours, and Waterlogged: Tales of the Seventh Sea. In 2021 she was selected to participate in the Blind Date Project, facilitated by TCAF and the French Embassy in Canada.

She graduated with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2015 & teaches comics in the Continuing Studies program at Langara.

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