Belle of the Ball
by Mari Costa
2023
Belle of the Ball is a cute little YA graphic novel about high school romance. There's a lesbian love triangle, with all the inherent conflict and heartbreak, right at the center of the story, but Mari Costa writes it all very gently, very kindly. The result is much more of a light-hearted romcom than any kind of tale of teen angst. There are no mean girls here, just three young adults trying to follow their hearts, if only they can figure out what they really want first.
The cast is three high school senior girls - ambitious cheerleader Regina; her girlfriend, soccer champ Chloe; and shy, nerdy Hawkins. Regina is smart and popular, the head cheerleader who's dating the star player of the soccer team, a straight A student who's already been accepted to the local college but still has her eye set on Harvard, and a future doctor with her 10-year life plan already all mapped out. Chloe is much less ambitious. She likes soccer and is good at it, she gets good-enough grades in everything but English, but prefers video games to studying, and gets bored whenever Regina's talking to her other friends about their goals for the future. It more seems like she's along for the ride than like she genuinely wants the same 10-year plan for herself.
And then there's Hawkins. Shy, self-conscious and awkward, nerdy, and an accidental force of chaos, who inadvertently crashed headlong into the fault lines in Regina and Chloe's relationship. Hawkins is also the school's cat-headed mascot. At the start of the story, she asks Regina to the homecoming dance, because she's had a long-time crush on her from a distance, and she mistakenly thought Regina and Chloe had broken up.
When Regina realizes that Chloe's recent low grades in English are going to jeopardize her soccer eligibility and her conditional college acceptance (and thus, the 10-year plan), she comes up with a strategy to put things back on track. Regina uses Hawkins's crush to convince her to tutor Chloe in exchange for a chance to hang out with them at school. Hawkins, despite knowing this is a bad idea, really does want more friends, and friendship with Regina specifically, and follows her heart and agrees.
Chloe is understandably not impressed with the plan to be tutored by the person who was flirting with her girlfriend, and isn't really interested in being tutored at all. She also quickly becomes suspicious that Hawkins seems to know too much about her, until suddenly, she connects two dots in her mind, and realizes that 'B Hawkins' is the same person as 'Belle,' Chloe's kindergarten classmate and first crush, Belle, who wore a princess dress to school every day, who Chloe used to follow around the playground, wishing she could be her knight. (Separate from this, there's also a running gag that from Hawkins's perspective, she and Regina have hung out several times in group settings, but Regina literally never noticed her there until she asked her out.)
You might be able to see where this is going. Regina and Chloe have different visions for their futures, and care about those visions with very different levels of intensity. At the same time that they might be growing apart anyway, Chloe and Hawkins suddenly start spending a lot more time together, and any feelings of attraction either of them may start to develop have a certain sort of plausible deniability to them ... right up to the end, when the feelings become so strong they're undeniable.
And as I said, it's all handled in a way that's fairly emotionally mature, with a minimum of raised voices or tears. Early on, it might be easy to think that Regina is controlling or manipulative, Chloe a bully, or Hawkins a pushover, but they all quickly grow beyond that. Regina tends to dominate any scene she's in, but we spend most of the book with Chloe and Hawkins. They spend a lot of time at home studying, but a highlight - narratively, visually, and emotionally - comes when Chloe buys Hawkins a ticket to the Renaissance Fair and rents her a princess dress, the first time she's worn one in years...
Costa's art is friendly and accessible. Aside from the black outlines and white negative space, all the tones are shades of pink. It's not just an accent color, this is a very pink book, and all the shades are different saturations of fuchsia pink (or what you might call 'Barbie pink'). Costa gives us a diverse cast, both ethnically and in terms of body types. The general absence of mean-spirited intent makes this a light read, and the art style complements that.
The cast is three high school senior girls - ambitious cheerleader Regina; her girlfriend, soccer champ Chloe; and shy, nerdy Hawkins. Regina is smart and popular, the head cheerleader who's dating the star player of the soccer team, a straight A student who's already been accepted to the local college but still has her eye set on Harvard, and a future doctor with her 10-year life plan already all mapped out. Chloe is much less ambitious. She likes soccer and is good at it, she gets good-enough grades in everything but English, but prefers video games to studying, and gets bored whenever Regina's talking to her other friends about their goals for the future. It more seems like she's along for the ride than like she genuinely wants the same 10-year plan for herself.
And then there's Hawkins. Shy, self-conscious and awkward, nerdy, and an accidental force of chaos, who inadvertently crashed headlong into the fault lines in Regina and Chloe's relationship. Hawkins is also the school's cat-headed mascot. At the start of the story, she asks Regina to the homecoming dance, because she's had a long-time crush on her from a distance, and she mistakenly thought Regina and Chloe had broken up.
When Regina realizes that Chloe's recent low grades in English are going to jeopardize her soccer eligibility and her conditional college acceptance (and thus, the 10-year plan), she comes up with a strategy to put things back on track. Regina uses Hawkins's crush to convince her to tutor Chloe in exchange for a chance to hang out with them at school. Hawkins, despite knowing this is a bad idea, really does want more friends, and friendship with Regina specifically, and follows her heart and agrees.
Chloe is understandably not impressed with the plan to be tutored by the person who was flirting with her girlfriend, and isn't really interested in being tutored at all. She also quickly becomes suspicious that Hawkins seems to know too much about her, until suddenly, she connects two dots in her mind, and realizes that 'B Hawkins' is the same person as 'Belle,' Chloe's kindergarten classmate and first crush, Belle, who wore a princess dress to school every day, who Chloe used to follow around the playground, wishing she could be her knight. (Separate from this, there's also a running gag that from Hawkins's perspective, she and Regina have hung out several times in group settings, but Regina literally never noticed her there until she asked her out.)
You might be able to see where this is going. Regina and Chloe have different visions for their futures, and care about those visions with very different levels of intensity. At the same time that they might be growing apart anyway, Chloe and Hawkins suddenly start spending a lot more time together, and any feelings of attraction either of them may start to develop have a certain sort of plausible deniability to them ... right up to the end, when the feelings become so strong they're undeniable.
And as I said, it's all handled in a way that's fairly emotionally mature, with a minimum of raised voices or tears. Early on, it might be easy to think that Regina is controlling or manipulative, Chloe a bully, or Hawkins a pushover, but they all quickly grow beyond that. Regina tends to dominate any scene she's in, but we spend most of the book with Chloe and Hawkins. They spend a lot of time at home studying, but a highlight - narratively, visually, and emotionally - comes when Chloe buys Hawkins a ticket to the Renaissance Fair and rents her a princess dress, the first time she's worn one in years...
Costa's art is friendly and accessible. Aside from the black outlines and white negative space, all the tones are shades of pink. It's not just an accent color, this is a very pink book, and all the shades are different saturations of fuchsia pink (or what you might call 'Barbie pink'). Costa gives us a diverse cast, both ethnically and in terms of body types. The general absence of mean-spirited intent makes this a light read, and the art style complements that.
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