:sniffles: That is all.

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Heart in a Box explores a lot of different issues in sometimes poignant, very often painful ways. Family, loss, betrayal, friendship, love, companionship - but none of that is what caught me and kept me reading. What kept me reading was the honest sincerity of it all.

I've never been in Emma place, but I've been hurt and I can relate to those feelings if not that experience. The aching gulf of betrayal when you realize you gave your heart to someone who didn't care, that feeling of detachment from it all because why bother? The knowledge, whether true or not, that you just weren't enough. That rage because how could they do this to you.

Its a feeling anyone who has ever cared about another person understands.

And for Emma, The Man With No Name was just the latest in a series of heart breaks where she lacked any ability to take control of the situation.

Look its not easy caring, especially if you care with all your heart like Emma does. When you go all in on someone, when you think your future and theirs are so intertwined there is no future without them...its so much easier to just NOT. Not care. Not try. Give up. Not die, but just not...live really.

And Emma experiences that firsthand when she's offered a chance to give up her heart by Bob. Its a little unclear whether its her literal heart or not (there's a physicality to it that I'll explain a bit more later), but the effect is immediate. Emma goes from bright colors to drab dreary grays and brown as she "lives" her life without a heart. She no longer has the pain of the betrayal from the Man With No Name, but she also can't find any sort of interest in the rest of life either.

Thus does she try to re-negotiate with Bob (who's just a middleman really) to gain her heart back. But as with anything in life, something worth having is immensely harder to retake then give up sending Emma on a cross-country trip to find the pieces of her heart that have been spread across several sources.

I mentioned earlier some confusion over whether Emma physically lost her heart, or if it was metaphorical sort of thing. Bob tells her she needs to collect the pieces of her heart that she needs to recover and put them inside a box. One of the first people she comes across, someone who also deals in the heart (so to speak), she needs to PHYSICALLY get the piece from him. Later its a matter of having it, more or less, willed back to her.

Looking back at her journey it follows a pattern that not only let's her get her heart back, but also able to deal with the ramifications (all the painful painful ramifications) of getting it back. She's a much stronger person by the end for having gone on the journey and met the people she did. As an allegory to how we deal with pain and learn from it, Thompson (who I already know can do a superb job at handling these issues--see [b:The Girl Who Would Be King|16050500|The Girl Who Would Be King|Kelly Thompson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348778051s/16050500.jpg|21832796] or her current run on the [b:Jem and the Holograms: Showtime|26031312|Jem and the Holograms Showtime|Kelly Thompson|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1438626463s/26031312.jpg|45957614] comic--is thoughtful and doesn't exclude that sometimes the answer isn't to forget, but to remember.

McClaren, whose artwork I'm less familiar with, is a very good foil to the story. The sometimes minimalist scenes or exaggerated moments blend perfectly with Thompson's story telling.

I highly recommend this graphic novel. ( )

The Man with No Name breaks Emma's heart and she gets a chance to get rid of her heart to feel no more pain. But she soon realize that a life without a heart she has no life...

This graphic novel was a big surprise for me. I hoped it would be enjoyable to read. The art was a bit meh for me in the beginning, then it grew on me and in the end I came to love it. The same goes for the story. I was a bit confused when it came to the heart of the cat; I was afraid Brock had been run over or something. Then, I went back and read the pages again and I think my heart brook a bit when I realized what the cat had done. Without doubt the best part of the Heart in a Box. But that can be because I love cats.

This is a wonderful graphic novel. I loved the humor, the sadness and how wonderfully lovely the story could be sometimes. The ending was truly great. Read it!

I received this copy from Dark Horse Originals through Edelweiss in return for an honest review! Thank you! ( )

I always love it when I book I know nothing about except the title surprises and delights me. It took me a second to warm up to the art, but the scripting grabbed me immediately in this fantasy yarn about heartbreak and the long cross-country road to putting the pieces back together.

In double-checking Kelly Thompson's name, I see that I've read some of her perfectly fine work-for-hire published by Archie and Marvel. Here's hoping she has a chance to put her heart into something as winning as this again in the near future. ( )

Really good. A bit confusing at times but a unique colorful art style and a message about heartbreak/negative emotions make it worth reading. I think another volume or a few more pages could have fleshed things out more. A few points off because I really hate the ex-girlfriend beats the snot out of her cheating boyfriend's new girl trope. Lowkey, I hope Emma wasn't taking advantage of her friend Xan. He was awfully chill about her stealing his credit card during her heart journey. ( )

I do believe that my own heart might be a bit broken after reading this. Most of us have suffered heartbreak at one point in our lives. I think all of us have at some point wished we could just rip it out, in an effort make the pain stop. That's why Heart in a Box is so amazing. It's a concept that everyone can relate to, wrapped up in a fascinating story.

Let's start with Emma's character, and the fact that I totally loved her. Here was a woman who I could totally get behind. She looks like a real person. She acts like a real person. She makes terrible decisions on a whim, mostly due to heartbreak, like a real person. What I'm attempting to explain is that Emma is easy to love. Even if the story didn't always make perfect sense, she was what I hung onto. This perfectly flawed woman who just wanted to feel whole again.

Which brings me to the fact that everything isn't laid out in black and white. Kelly Thompson's story assumes that you're ready to let go of reality, and be swept away. Once I stopped trying to figure out exactly how Brock and his offer worked, I found myself enjoying this much more. It's a story about love and loss. About accepting the pain, with the joy, and sometimes letting someone else have a little piece of you. If you're willing to let it, Emma's story will quickly pull you in.

Look, I enjoyed this. That's the long, and the short of it. I especially love Meredith McClaren's slightly gritty, and toned down illustrations. I'm going to be on the lookout for more from these two for sure! ( )