You Belong Here
On the first day of senior year, Essie Rosen has it all figured out. She has plans for college, supportive friends, and she’s dating the boy next door. But as the school year unfolds, her perfect life starts to fall apart. Her boyfriend breaks up with her, her best friend has stopped responding to her texts, and her college dreams are on the rocks, all while under the scrutiny of her perfectionist mother. Things get even more complicated when she meets Christopher, an alluring junior, whose older brother set her own brother, Gabe, down the path to drug addiction. Essie just wants to know where she belongs, but everyone around her wants to tell her how to live her life.
You Belong Here, written by debut author Sara Phoebe Miller and illustrated by Morgan Beem, is a coming of age teen drama that explores family and personal relationships, sex, and mental health while navigating the end of high school in a small town. Miller’s story is relatable and engaging. Even though familiar tropes show up, like enemies-to-lovers, there are twists and turns in the narrative that keep things fresh. It’s hard to see how things will turn out for Essie as she zooms through her senior year, but her character development is satisfying. Beem’s beautiful ink and watercolors make the world feel lively, even when there are minimal backgrounds. Beem is particularly talented at expressing characters’ emotions through their facial expressions and movements and every page is visually captivating.
There’s a great deal of diversity among the characters, positively representing several different cultural identities. A discussion between Essie, who is Jewish, and Christopher, who is Chinese American, hints at racism in their small, suburban town, but racial tensions are largely left out of the narrative. This quick reference might have had more impact if it had been explored more deeply, but feels more like an afterthought than a feature of Essie’s world.
One of the most refreshing things about this book is that Essie is drawn fat. Her story, however, has almost nothing to do with her weight. She brings up her size once as a reason she’s been discriminated against in acting roles, but she gets to be a typical teenager, she gets to attract boys and pursue sex, she gets to wear what she wants and be who she is. And no one, not even her mother, who nitpicks every other aspect of her life, tells her to change her body. In a world full of stories about fatness being a problem to be fixed, this is a breath of fresh air.
The publisher gives an age range of 14 to 18, but some content readers may wish to know about include mentions of drugs, addiction, and rehabilitation, depression, underage drinking and smoking, language, and an attempted sexual assault on Essie by an older male stranger. There is no overt nudity, but two teenagers do attempt to have sex. Even with all these tough issues, Essie’s story of drama and romance is a fun read and would be a good addition to a teen graphic novel collection.
You Belong HereÂ
By Sara Phoebe Miller
Art by Morgan Beem
Macmillan, 2025
ISBN: 9781250822307
Company Age Rating:Â 14 – 18
NFNT Age Recommendation: Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16)
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Character Representation:Â Jewish ,
