Ya’ll @notlizlemon wasn’t exaggerating. This was an… experience.

This book absolutely hijacked my brain. I wasn’t reading it so much as interrogating it. Every chapter had me stopping the audiobook, rewinding, flipping back through pages, rereading footnotes, and questioning whether I was being manipulated by the narrator… or the editors… or both. 😭

It’s an alternate history dystopian told as the autobiography of a deceased psychologist, complete with editorial commentary from the publishing press. That format is absolutely genius because you’re never allowed to settle into one version of the truth. Every time I thought I had my footing, the book quietly pulled the rug out from under me.

The wildest part is that I kept forgetting this was fiction. Miriam and the Yuriatin Press commentary had me so fully invested that I started treating everything like I was reading an actual historical document. Then the book/audio would turn around and address me directly and I would physically lean back, bug-eyed, like “EXCUSE ME?? YOU KNOW I’M HERE??” The fourth wall was no more.

What starts as a reflective memoir slowly transforms into a deeply unsettling exploration of memory, trauma, institutional power, propaganda, and the terrifying ways “for the greater good” can become justification for unimaginable cruelty. The horror isn’t loud. It’s watching reasonable ideas evolve, one tiny step at a time, into something monstrous.

This isn’t an action-packed dystopian. It’s quiet, philosophical, and demands your attention. It trusts you to wrestle with uncertainty instead of handing you easy answers. I closed this book with more questions than I started with, and somehow that feels exactly right.

And that ending… absolutely not. I was expecting emotional devastation. I was NOT expecting existential dread mixed with psychological horror that left me questioning every narrator, every editor, every institution, and probably my own grocery list.

If you love unreliable narrators, morally gray characters, psychological horror, and dystopias that feel disturbingly plausible, PLEASE pick this up.

My brain has officially been put through the Watercolor Quiet. Get your hands on this one to find out what I mean 🫣🫪

The worst sentence I’ve ever seen was in this book but, it also had some surprisingly deep themes at the end

I did not enjoy this; we’ll start there.

If my review is too long-winded, check out 🔗 @notlizlemon’s review for something shorter that captures my feelings too!

It’s been years since I’ve seen the film adaptation, so I won’t be making comparisons to that here. I specifically read the 🔗 30th Anniversary Edition but I am leaving my review on this listing, as this is the main edition and the one featured in a Quest.

Reading V for Vendetta in 2026 was a disconcerting experience. It is terrifyingly relevant, I fear bordering on prescient, and despite the message of resistance to the regime it inspired more dread than hope within me.

This series is dark both thematically and visually, and it is difficult to read on both accounts.

This comes down to personal preference, but I did not enjoy the art style. There is real artistic skill here, especially in the restrained use of color, so I don’t mean to say the art was bad, it just was not good for me. Processing visual information does not come as naturally to me as does processing written information, so V for Vendetta was legitimately challenging to me as a reader. I struggled to follow the story at times and felt confused more often than I think was intended. Aside from V, I had extreme difficulty in distinguishing characters, even including Eve(y) at times.

Worse, the lettering was also difficult to read. The letters weren’t crisp. The font itself was confusing (a U and the letters LI were often rendered almost identically, for example). Text was often italicized, making it even harder to read. It took far too much focus for me to just read the words from a visuals standpoint. I worry that beyond being unpleasant stylistically, this actually quite impedes accessibility.

It’s just really hard to forgive a comic/graphic novel for being so laborious to read when it comes to both the art and the lettering — what’s left after that?

I think the message of this story is so important, so vital. It is a story of resistance and hope and regaining humanity. It is a decidedly anarchist narrative, and its very creation was a form of protest. The creators intentionally portrayed this near-future as oppressively bleak and didn’t shy away from how awful authoritarianism is and how evil the accompanying prejudices are. It’s effective for sure, but sometimes it’s effective at the reader’s expense. I haven’t compiled CW but I recommend finding a list before reading this.

It’s a work that I consider valuable, but not a work I would actively recommend.

Idk guys, the thing about this one was that it was both a graphic novel and a chore to read 😭

I found the art and the font really challenging, and while I feel like the idea was interesting, the theatricality intriguing, and underlying themes good, I just did not enjoy reading this at all. By which I do mean both the story and the experience of zooming in and squinting constantly. Except for maybe… two? characters, the rest were truly interchangeable to me, which just made the events challenging to follow, and the amount of violence against women was frankly appalling, even if it was sending the message that like, authoritarian mean man bad.

Just not for me, I’m afraid!

I really did not enjoy the first couple of chapters, they felt like they were trying too hard, but once it turned into more of a Thelma and Louise style adventure, I got on board. The writing is, generally speaking, a lot better than I expected, and I truly loved the zany small town vibes, the side characters, and the Pawnee vs. Eagleton thing we had going on here.

My main issues besides the rough start were the real cruelty that Cam shows to Hazel, at times when she has done nothing wrong except exist while he is triggered, and the ending. The speed at which a divorcee (who repeatedly snarked about her mother’s many marriages) decided to fast forward through relationship stages did not feel a. realistic or b. true to the Hazel we all got to know, who had done a great job prior setting boundaries and standing up for herself. We can forgive someone without giving them the literal moon all in one shot, girl!

However, I think I would be remiss to focus on Ms. Score’s devotion to the wedding/marriage industrial complex and ignore how much fun I had in the middle. The bulk of the book is not just a romance, it is a celebration of ride or die friendship, creative problem-solving to protect a community, goofy animal content, remembering who TF you are, family that has weathered its fair share of storms and come out the other side still standing, caring for each other, AND holding each other accountable. The parents in this book were incredible, and I’m saying that as someone very skeptical of parents/family generally. So yeah, I am not gonna get hung up on the beginning or end. It’s about the journey, not the destination, right?