Review by Ian Keogh

Presenting a young adult graphic novel as a series of illustrated diary entries is a surprisingly original format, and successful for Alyssa Bermudez with Big Apple Diaries. This sequel memoir picks up with her starting high school in 2002. Credit to her teenage self for having the discipline to keep the dairy going for over four years back in the day.

The Alyssa we meet in 2002 isn’t keen on sports, but her parents insist she needs to take a sports class, and a process of elimination leaves only running. A month later she’s taking part in her first competition as part of a team. Entries on running are combined with memories of home life. Her parents have separated, and her father has found a new partner, but Alyssa is concerned he’s not keeping well and has money worries.

While packed with information about the growth of running success and drawn in a busy eye-catching manner, for too long Run Home has little of consequence to offer. Alyssa makes new friends, comes to enjoy running and finds her new older stepsister surprisingly good company. A third of the way through there’s a hell of a shock for Alyssa, which, if it actually happened that way, seems immensely poor judgement about disclosure. Yet having introduced something immense, thirty pages are turned before it’s mentioned again, and then only in passing. It’s halfway through Run Home before the concerns really kick in.

Part of the problem is Run Home being a sequel to Big Apple Diaries, which tackled the massive topic of a child’s perception of the 9/11 attacks on New York. After that, Alyssa finding out she enjoys running is small potatoes, no matter how cheerfully presented.

There’s no proper way to review Run Home without dropping the spoiler of the big shock being Alyssa’s father being diagnosed with health problems and his eventual death. This occurs around a year into the diaries, and this would have been a far stronger book if her father’s illness had been the focus from the start and the running included as a sideline contrast. There was no need to continue the format of Big Apple Diaries, and doing so proves extremely constricting.

Run Home’s second half is stronger not just for Alyssa coping with grief, but also for dealing with feelings as the running is bumped to a secondary factor. Too much of the first half is too ordinary and the question is how many readers will stick around to learn from the healing process laid out later?