Book Review: Darker ‘Solitaire’ provides good contrast to ‘Heartstopper’
Ed note: this review contains a slight spoiler. We have marked it as such.
*If you or anyone you know is struggling with a mental illness, please seek help. You can instant message a counselor at www.crisistextline.org or www.thetrevorproject.org. You can also find more resources at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org, www.adaa.org, and www.heardalliance.org. For anyone who needs to hear this: You matter.
I discovered Alice Oseman through her Heartstopper graphic novels, but the first story in her “Osemanverse” was actually Solitaire. (The “Osemanverse” includes the graphic novels of Heartstopper, four YA novels, and two novellas.) This YA novel featuring Tori Spring, Charlie’s older sister, was Oseman’s first published work in 2014 when Oseman was twenty years old. Solitaire (as well as any of the other novels) can be read independently of Heartstopper, and the reading order is not important.
From page one, Tori Spring is cynical and sarcastic. She excels at being a contrarian about everything, much to her friends and family’s dismay. She is not unlikeable, and in fact has many people who would like to be close to her, but she keeps everyone at arm’s length. In a new semester of high school, she meets Michael Holden; a loner who is ostracized for his quirkiness, Michael needs a new friend as much as Tori.
New friendship established, Tori and Michael spend the next few weeks trying to solve the mystery of an anonymous prankster in school. The pranks start innocently, with a sabotage of the deputy headmaster’s PowerPoint and stealing all of the school’s clocks. But as the pranks become violent enough to injure people, Tori decides that it’s her responsibility to uncover the prankster since they all seem to have something to do with her.
While the prankster plot is certainly intriguing, I found this book to be more of a character study. Being told in Tori’s perspective, we hear the most about her depression, but most of her peers have their own internal struggles that play out against each other in interesting ways. People are different in private than public, people lie and manipulate, but they are also vulnerable and in need of kindness. Teenage emotions are always fraught- hormones and tensions run high, and so everything feels deathly important. They have to learn to lean on each other instead of pushing away.
This novel is decidedly darker in tone than Heartstopper. Where Heartstopper is primarily about first love and flirtation, Solitaire is about somber personal journeys and strained relationships. But since their timelines overlap, they contrast each other in an interesting way. About two-thirds through Heartstopper Volume 4, its story leaves off at New Year’s and picks back up again in March; Solitaire takes place in January-February of that gap. Since Oseman wrote Solitaire first, I think she intentionally skipped the events of Solitaire so that Heartstopper wouldn’t be redundant. But it also serves to show that, while Nick and Charlie tend to be wrapped up in each other all the time, the world still goes on in dramatic fashion around them. Charlie’s mental illness seems to be all-encompassing, but when we pull back and look at their entire peer group, we see that he’s not the only one struggling. *
SPOILER AHEAD
Tori definitely makes some personal progress in this novel, but she is not “cured” of her depression and anxiety at the end, which I’m grateful for. We can best help those with mental illnesses by being honest about those problems and not keeping them taboo, so I think this novel does a good job of balancing truth with healing. My one problem with this story is that I was disappointed that Tori and Michael end up in a relationship. Their friendship throughout was so interesting and it seemed like that part of the ending was made to appease the publisher rather than what was actually best for the characters. One of the taglines for this book is, “This is not a love story,” and yet we got a kiss.
Since writing the above, I found out that Oseman has made Tori ace in retrospect. Oseman has said that she wasn’t aware of asexuality when she wrote the book, but definitely considers Tori to be ace now. My gut instinct was correct!
It’s a bit sad to leave Tori’s story behind since I enjoyed her arc so much, but it will be interesting to get to know others in the extended peer group. The remaining works that Oseman has written take place after these teens get to college, with the exception of the two novellas about Nick and Charlie. I hope to see tidbits of Tori in those as well, but at the very least we will see her again in the final Heartstopper Volume Five.
For those keeping track of the “Osemanverse” timeline, Solitaire takes place in January-February in the middle of Heartstopper Volume Four, exactly one year after Heartstopper Volume One begins. It’s a little confusing, but Oseman has provided a couple helpful breakdowns on her website. The images on her website include the timeline for her four novels and two novellas, as well as the graphic novel series.
