This is one of those books that I had looked at and never opened but had constantly been on the back of my mind as one I should pick up... I'm so glad I opened it on my Kindle this week because I got so lost in Hailsham and the dystopic England in its pages that I don't really remember the hours I spent reading it. They might as well have been five minutes.

Set in a dystopic future where humans are cloned and raised for the sole purpose of donating their vital organs to those that had them created. What ensues is a wildly ordinary tale made extraordinary by circumstance in the novel and heartbreaking and beautiful and tragic and funny and honest... This book will take you through all the stages we go through when we make friends, when we lose friends, when we fall in and out of love, how awkward friendships can be, how honesty fails sometimes and deception can poison the well forever...

If you're looking for a world to get lost in, choose this novel. You won't regret it.

If you are in a particularly sad or unhappy period of life, I suggest waiting to read this book. It's the most devastating novel I've read and the reviews that claim it to be improbably hopeful at times are overestimations... Unflinchingly honest, improbably heartbreaking, and unbelievably moving, this is a book that everyone should read, in their own time, with the expectation of being wounded, page by page. The best and hardest book I have ever read.

The illustrations are incredible... That was definitely what entranced me. I couldn't help but stay in the world of Persepolis through the dark pieces and the terrible tragedies and through the humor that punctuates the narrative throughout. Satrapi is a masterful writer and a skilled artist and I hope she creates more graphic novels.