Review by Frank Plowright

Cross My Heart and Never Lie follows roughly the first two months of the school year as experienced by Tuva. She’s twelve, and looking forward to reconnecting with her friends Bao and Linnéa after the summer holidays. However, she rapidly finds things have changed. Linnéa now has a boyfriend and wants to spend time with him rather than being with her friends, and Bao greatly resents this. Tuva is caught in the middle, and very soon makes a life-changing discovery about new classmate Mariam.

Even given the massive expansion in young adult graphic novels, finding one translated from Norwegian is unusual, yet the easy charm and sympathetic cast show why it’s worthwhile. Nora Dåsnes manages to create a world where shades of grey are a new experience for the girls, who’ve always previously enjoyed each others’ company without outside intrusions. The onset of puberty changes everything, and there’s a nuanced exploration of that, reinforcing that everyone develops at a different rate.

The continuing thread is Tuva’s dated diary, in which she explains her world and confides her feelings. The diary entries are handwritten text and illustrations in what’s quite the mixed approach story. Other pages are text and illustration, but enough is told in the form of comics to justify classifying Cross My Heart and Never Lie as a graphic novel.

Simplicity is key. Dåsnes never over-explains, and trusts her audience to be smart enough to pick up on aspects not immediately clear to Tuva, or her friends, and to cut through disagreements. The art has a deliberate child-like quality, maintaining the pretence that everything is Tuva’s work, but also possesses the greater emotional emphasis necessary.

Everything is charming and thoughtfully produced, but the ending is puzzling because there’s no great resolution or compromise. In that way it reflects real life, but there’s also a feeling of too much being held over for sequel Save Our Forest.