Name: Cheer Up
ISBN: 9781620109557

Crystal Frasier

A sweet, queer teen romance perfect for fans of Fence and Check, Please! Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who’s under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeeBee is a people-pleaser—a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life to keep their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them.

Love and Pompoms

Cheer Up

Wes Michaud

This book was amazing I LOVED it!!!!!! the story was great and keep me invested and it also filled my heart with joy I read it in one sitting

Greer Andersson

5 ⭐️
This was so goddamn precious and had such important messages that were portrayed in such a heart-warming and memorable way. 

Because you don’t have too much time with the characters in a graphic novel, I think sometimes it’s hard to properly portray personalities and quirks of the characters, but I’m happy to say it did really well with this factor!

I was smiling throughout the entirety of this novel and am looking forward to reading more of the author’s work!

Briar's Reviews

This book has been popping up EVERYWHERE for me. Reviews, ads, the works! I could hardly believe how much one book popped up so much, and I work in Marketing - I know how that stuff works. I saw it on NetGalley and decided... Why not? I love cheerleading, graphic novels and fun! So it was time for me to venture into a quirky adventure!

My Notes:

1. The illustrations are on point! I seriously dig the fun and quirky vibe they give off. It makes the book very engaging, fun and colourful. Props to the illustrators! 

2. The first few pages along sum up how I felt about high school: Why did it matter if you could throw a ball good or be super popular? Extracurriculars are great, but sometimes I think colleges need to consider the mental health and overall well being of their students. And anyways, how does being a good basketball player say you'll be a good community member or team player? Most of the people I went to high school with who were in sports were absolute terrors in the post-secondary careers. Something to chew on, I guess.

3. Cheerleading tryout flyer with a pigeon dressed up as a cheerleader - This is my new standard. Good luck meeting it marketing teams. This high school gets it.

4. LGBT representation. We meet a cheer team's 1st transgender cheerleader. I wasn't aware at first, and then it made me proud. 

5. Beatrice makes me even more proud with how she stands up for others. I wish we had more strong people like Beatrice around. Gold stars for Beatrice.

6. There are so many good quotes in here. Seriously, these writers also deserve some gold stars. Beatrice can share.

7. Can I smack Beatrice's parents? Transitioning is not "a luxury". Geez Louise. And the other parents who don't treat her well? Seriously, give this girl her rights and stop acting like you're the centre of the universe. This book shows the awful side of humanity really well. 

8. There are some super cute and sweet moments that I won't spoil... BUT OMG THIS BOOK. My heart! It feels so real and reminds me of high school, but with some more current issues.

9. I NEED A FOLLOW-UP THIS IS SO SWEET HOLY MOLY.

Anywho, I highly recommend this book. LGBT awareness, high school romance, cheerleading and fun! It's a fast read with lots of spunky high school drama.

Five out of five stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Oni Press for providing me a free copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

This was a really cute, uplifting graphic novel and I wish I had read it sooner! It’s a great comp for fans of Heartstopper. The characters were all charming and well written, and the story was short and sweet. I kind of wish it had been longer so we could see more of the development the characters had along the way (the ending happened a little fast) but I think this was a good complete story as it is. Definitely underrated and deserving of more attention. 

Cloudface

Nessa Luna

Thank you NetGalley and Oni Press for a review copy of this book.

This was incredibly cute and honestly, I want more! I hope this will be a series because I want more of Beebee and Annie! It kind of reminded me of Heartstopper so I highly recommend this one if you loved those graphic novels!

Isabela H 

SO CUTE
Guys, you need to read this ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE love story between two characters who deserve the best. This couple is literally perfect for each other and helped each other grow and I really appreciated the narrative arcs.

Marissa Davis

** spoiler alert **
           Oh My God Yes girl yes. I have to say this and it might seem early to say but this is by far my favorite book for the month of June. This book is about Annie who is a geek and wanting to get into a great college once she graduates. But she needs to do some extracurricular activities like like sports and clubs. she learned her mother was on a cheerleading team when she was in high school. so she promised her mom that she would give it her best shot. well she made the team. and it only goes up hill from there. be on the look out for my monthly wrap up at the end of the month to hear me gush all about my favorite book of the month Cheer Up love and pompoms.

caly

sunshine gf x grumpy mean goth gf my beloveds

Eliana Mor

I absolutely adored this book. I mean a fat, grouchy lesbian and a trans woman who is scared of speaking out. This book was just yelling at me. Aesthetically, the art was beautiful and I think it really portrayed things well. Character-wise, I adored everyone. We really got to learn about these characters despite it being a graphic novel, which generally don't have much time. Plot-wise, it also worked for me. This book was just so so good.

✨Tyler ✨

3.5. story felt a little rushed but it was cute.

Flavia Louise

Camila Eduarda Vilela Lobianco

This book is about the same cliche as always: we have this girl that is really smart, but can't get into college without having some extracurricular activities, and this other girl that is really great at sports but not that great at school. But, man, this is cute because we have somethings that are not that usual: it's a sapphic comic and this changes everything, because brings a new light for the same cliche as always.

I'll add here that Annie is the most funny character I've seen in a long time, she has some pretty good quotes that make this comic a nice read if you want an easy and cute read for the afternoon, surely this made my day such better. Annie's mom is also the coolest person ever.

I also want to talk about Beatrice. She is a fighter, she is the first transgender to be accepted in the cheerleader team and become the captain. She has a lot of family struggles because of her identity and this is really a beautiful part of the book.

Well, all I have to say is that I loved this book, this is so cute and funny ♥

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this awesome book.

I loved this cute graphic novel! It had lots of representation which I appreciated. (sapphic, trans mc, plus-size mc) Even though it was a short read, I think that the character development was well done and I loved their relationship. I really liked the art too! I love that the plus-size character did a sport and wasn’t trying to lose weight . Overall, this was a very cute, sweet and fun graphic novel that also discussed some very important topics.

Áróra Lind 

4.5 stars

I don't read a lot of graphic novels but I had heard great things about this one from my friends on bookstagram. 
This was such a quick, fun, and sweet read. I would have loved for it to be longer 
I recommend giving it a try. It covers a really important topic

thanks to the publishers for approving me on netgalley

Sofi Claros

Thank you Netgalley and Oni Press for an ARC of this book!
 
Let me just start by saying that I could have easily read this book in a day, because it was so easy to read (aside from being a graphic novel) because the story was so interesting and cute and ugh I was so interested in these characters!
First of all, the illustrations are beautiful! I loved the style of the drawings and the fact that it was in color? Amazing
I loved Beatrice so much, she was so real! She didn't feel stereotypical in any way, the fact that the was a people pleaser was so relatable ugh I loved her! How she learned to stand up for herself? Amazing
And Annie, Her fierce chacracter was amazing! We met these two absolute polar opposites and see how they connect so much and so perfectly! Both if the girls character growth is amazing, they both learn so much from the other, I loved them so much! 
I find it amazing how I could relate to both of them when I literally have nothing in common with either of them, and that makes the author a GREAT author! 
I absolutely loved this graphic novel! 4.5/5 stars juat because it felt kinda rushed at times, but aside from that, ther was nothing I did not enjoy!

Rose Stanley

Zipped through this in like 5 seconds - super-bright and breezy read. This was suuuuper cute, if fairly unrealistic (partly because the story goes at a mile a minute). Still, sometimes you need something frothy and feel-good : )

Lucía RG

** spoiler alert **
           *I received a copy of this via Netgalley. All opinions expressed are my own*

This was a very good graphic novel with so many important messages. I got promised a similar novel to the Check! Please graphic novels, and it delivered, although I did not like this as much. The illustrations were gorgeous, and I loved how good the representation was with the body shapes of the girls, because they were so varied.

The plot was interesting, but it was not as focused on cheerleading as I thought it would be, which makes sense since it is a super short book. It deals with very heavy topics such as the struggles of Bebe after coming out as transexual and having to deal with people treating her differently and even sometimes unfairly. 

Also it was interesting to see how sometimes the people we love can hurt us even when they don’t mean to, such as the cheerleaders not really taking Bebe’s feelings into account and deciding what was best for her instead of simply asking, or Bebe’s parents wanting the best for her but not realizing they were hurting her and not listening to her needs.

anna

This was very good, I really enjoyed it and would recommend it. It shows a great story and it's a well told story, the romance is good paced based on the amount of pages this have. And I was so happy with the way they portayed both the characters and how they're opposites, Annie doesn't care about the opinions people have of her, and Beebee is a people pleaser. It's a great way of showing different LGBTQ+ representation, me being a Lesbian reader can't say much about being Trans but there's a part where Beebee says and I quote:

"I know I shouldn't apologize all the time... I just feel like I have to apologize for being around.(...) And even the people who are nice get so much angrier when I get upset than they did before. Like they're just waiting for proof that I'm "One of the bad ones".".

I felt that part on another level, the LGBTQ+ community is already a very targeted community, we want to be loud and speak out but, at least for me growing in a very religious house hold and still closeted, need to be very carefull to not pass the line between nice and mean/angry, we have to say what we have to defend who we are and still be 100% nice to the people who is disrespectful and pejudiced towards something we can't control, otherwise we're the bad guys. 

Sorry for my rant, but I really loved that part and this book!

Thank You NetGalley and OniPress for giving me acess to this book. (This is review contain only my honest opinion)

Nikki van Zoom

Wow! I absolutely LOVED it!! Graphic Novels are still pretty new to me, but I'm trying to branch out more and I definitely chose the right one for it. It's so nice to see queer cheerleaders being accepted. It deals with the struggle of being transgender as well as being a lesbian as a teenager, but does it in such a special way. I didn't like the dad at first, but later I understood where his behaviour came from more and I ended up loving him! Beebee and Annie are so cute together... I would love to see a sequel to this novel where they explore their relationship a bit more! 

 Thank you to NetGalley and the author for providing me with an eArc in return for a honest review.

Josee Blanchard

Got this copy for free with Netgalley. 

This graphic novel is the most adorable. From the characters to the art style, super adorable.

I loved all the presentation of people of colour. To LGBTQ+ representation, to transgenders. With parents just wanting to protect their child. I feel that this kind of novel needs to be in school. And needs to be talked about more. Before yesterday, I had not heard about this and it needs to be talked more for sure. 

I only have one thing that I would have loved. It would be, for this graphic novel to be much longer. I was sad once i was done.

This author is new to me as well, so I’m excited to read more of her work. Looking at the illustration too, I want to look at more of them.

Quotes: “When you invited me onto the team, you told me cheerleading whole thing was ‘supporting each other’…”

“You’ve gotta do way better than that to make people hate you. Trust me.”

The best thing I could do is honestly recommend this book, you will not regret it.

This was a major 4 stars,

Thanks for reading. 
A happy reading.

JMB.

Jelke Lenaerts

I received a galley of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

This book has content warnings for transphobia and sexual harassement.

I went into this not knowing much more than that this is a cute sapphic romance graphic novel, so I was surprised that one of the two characters is trans. That was a great addition though. I think this graphic novel discussed a lot of topics surrounding that and showing the seriousness about those topics while still keeping a lighthearted and overall cute tone to the entire graphic novel. I really liked our two main characters and how their relationship developed. I also quite liked the cheerteam and the way those girls ralied around each other and only had the others best interests at heart. I feel like a lot of the time we see cheerleaders in media it's full of girl on girl hate and I liked that this wasn't the case in this graphic novel. Anyway, I highly recommend this.

Lena

Thank you to Oni Press for providing me an ARC of this for review! 

This did a great job of addressing really tough issues while also being cute, heartwarming, and fun. If you want just a glimpse at life for a trans teen this could be the place to start. It touches on so many little daily problems, and how difficult it can be to balance anything and everything. The art was gorgeous and the balance of big topics and light moments was done really well!

Cheer Up Love and Pompoms