Review by Ian Keogh
Suzana Harcum and Owena White’s Tripping Over You began very strongly in establishing school friends Liam and Milo as best mates, but with a continuing undercurrent of a deeper relationship lurking beneath. It’s portrayed with subtlety and charm but jettisoning a strong supporting cast resulted in a weaker Book Two.
Harcum opens with Liam about to be Best Man at the wedding of another former school friend Archie, and the assorted complications that generates occupy around half of this series conclusion. As seen in Book One, Archie’s relationship with Milo wasn’t as close and even as Liam’s partner he’s not invited to the stag night. He doesn’t miss much, as it’s rather a tame affair.
The relationship between Liam and Milo is well defined by both Harcum and artist White, who carries a fair load with so much being represented visually. There’s an intimacy and tenderness conveyed whenever Liam and Milo are alone together, and the success of it is because it’s about the only time Milo isn’t hiding behind something. White also defines other people well, having an intuition for designs representing personalities.
A supporting cast are reintroduced, but Harcum doesn’t make the most of them in story terms. Too many long, meandering conversations about feelings can conceal how good Harcum can be with an absolute zinger when the opportunity presents itself. However, there are once again too many conversations without great purpose. The situations they lead to are well conceived, but those conversations barely move the plot forward, don’t tell us anything we don’t already know about the participants, and they’re not fascinating enough in their own right. An example would be the prelude to Liam and Milo attending a Christmas party thrown by Milo’s mother. Little of what leads up to the guys arriving at the door is necessary, but the party itself is eventful. While noting friends in the supporting cast were so effective in Book One, here too many have stories that fail to resonate, Hebert and Matt for one.
It’s frustrating as everyone is attractively drawn by White, and a self-aware Harcum includes a scene about over-thinking, but even pacing the reading to a sequence at a time highlights them lasting too long. Taken as a whole there’s charm to the way Liam and Milo’s relationship begins and evolves over three books, and it’s possible you’ll become so invested in their well conceived personalities that scenes won’t drag. At the very least we have two creators whose next project is going to be worth looking out for.
