Tillie Walden has masterfully created another artful graphic novel. Her use of limited color pallets creates a strong sense otherworldliness that suited the space adventure of On a Sunbeam perfectly. The unsettling atmosphere of the place settings made this book unlike anything I’ve ever read.

On a Sunbeam is about friendship and love and trying to set things right. The characters develop friendships as the story progresses that pull the reader in, these characters are strong and lovable and easy to root for.

On a Sunbeam is something I would recommend to a lot of graphic novel readers. I love that it has LBGTQ+ inclusivity and tons of strong female characters.

I shared a review of On a Sunbeam on my Goodreads page.

This entire novel is great. Tillie Walden has done an amazing job on the characterization, and she moves the novel forward with confidence. The science-fiction pieces come well. I think it is heart-wrenching at times, and at others, you will feel uplifted. You'll enjoy this book if you like science-fiction and queer love stories.

While not my favorite book by Tillie Walden, this book is memorable. The displacement in time, the characters, and the sci-fi world are well drawn. The empowered female characters are appreciated. An interesting read.

Walden's sophomore graphic novel blew me away. A nearly complete departure from her first graphic memoir, Spinning, On a Sunbeam is the story and reflection of Mia, a crew worker on board a spacecraft, cleaning up architectural messes intergalactically. This novel is a sweeping love story, filled with beautiful world-building, graphics, and characters.
Mia spends a good chunk of her time remembering her life and her love at a boarding school. Her crew find out about this long lost love of hers and agree to take a trip to a potentially dangerous and well-protected location in space to see if her love has held strong over the ages. Walden's graphics are beautiful, and I loved that she spent time letting the pictures show the story. Not every page is filled with words. If you like The Sculptor by Scott McCloud, this book had a similar feeling. And it's a huge tome! I love fat graphic novels, and so appreciate the amount of work that went into building such a magnificent story.

Gorgeous linework, but the more of Walden's work I read, the more I think she would benefit from stronger editing. This book is over 500 pages, and a quarter of the way in, I still couldn't tell you what she was aiming for. There's slow burn and then there's "when is something going to happen?" It's hard to keep track of what's going on, with the flipping back and forth between settings and time periods. There's an argument to be made for having readers engage closely with the work, but there are also basic techniques for grounding and making sure they're following along with you, which Walden doesn't seem familiar with or interested in.

Stunning art and fascinating use of color, I thoroughly enjoyed this queer space story, and thought the use of flashbacks was done in an effective way

I struggled to connect with Tillie’s sophomore story, having loved Spinning. The art and color use are stunning so I highly recommend checking it out if the story sounds interesting to you!

While I didn't enjoy this book quite as much as Spinning, I still breezed through the 530+ pages in 24 hours. The premise of the book is interesting. The book is set in space and, while there is a non-binary character, there are no male characters. Honestly, with so many strong female characters, it wasn't even really noticeable that there was no men in the book. However, this interesting aspect of the world-building was not explored.

After finishing high school, Mia joins a reconstruction team that works to restore old buildings. Through flashbacks, the book also describes how Mia met her girlfriend, Grace, during the girls' freshman year of high school five years earlier. Grace had to suddenly drop out toward the end of the school year, and Mia always wondered about her. The girls' slow-burn romance was adorable and I wanted more scenes like it.

I have mixed feelings about the artwork. The panels depicting the outer space background or exterior of buildings, such as the abandoned religious building they reconstructed, were intricate and colorful. However, I didn't love the color palette used for some of the other scenes. The background was dark in many panels, which made it difficult for me to distinguish between some of the characters. I also did not connect to any of the characters. Personally, I would prefer more character development and less action scenes.

I loved Tillie Walden’s art! I’m still returning to the book just to adore drawings. It’s a pity I don’t have a printed version.

I’m all in if there’s cosmos in a novel. Especially, if it’s a graphic novel. I liked the plot and characters, but maybe more work could have been done. Sometimes it was too simple and raw, and other times I couldn’t understand the world Tillie Walden has created. But it’s a graphic novel, so maybe it should be like this? Maybe you need to feel it like poetry, not to understand all of it with words.

There is a long lost love in the novel. We have two parallel stories with the same main character named Mia. She fell in love in college and now she’s working on the space ship (it looks like a fish, so cool!). How had her love ended in the past and what is she trying to find in the space now? All of it locks in one piece somewhere in the end of the novel. By the way, all the characters are girls and women. Somehow it was really nice to have a novel without men at all. It was definitely new to me and felt really feministic.

So, “On a Sunbeam” is an original and beautiful story. You don’t find something like this every day. I really recommend it, even if the genre “graphic novel” is new for you, like it was for me.

I loved the artwork in this book. While the story fell flat for me in a few places, I kept turning the pages because of how beautifully constructed this graphic novel is. Walden ties it all together in the end with a happy resolution.

Gorgeous graphic novel with a compelling plot. I purchased this title for our library based on my reading of this galley. (Review is short because it's been a substantial period of time since I read this book, but I wanted to give feedback and thanks.)

Tillie Walden has written a GIANT queer space opera that manages to be quiet and tense at the same time.
The story is told in two timelines, past and present, with a corresponding color change. The worldbuilding is fascinating, with the characters traveling through space to rebuilt various historic sites. The character development is also detailed, and though it's a little hard to sink into, with so many characters and two timelines, the payoff is worth it.
This book is over 500 pages, so when I say it's big? I mean it. It's sort of YA, sort of not, but it's definitely an f/f romance.

This was nearly perfect for me. The art was gorgeous and I want to live inside this comic. It was giving me Miyazaki and Neon Genesis vibes but way gayer. I just feel like there was almost too much trying to happen and not everything got to be fully explored, which sounds crazy in a 500+ book. But again nearly perfect!

This huge graphic novel, originally a webcomic, will have huge appeal to teen readers. The interesting artwork, outerspace/futuristic elements, feminist vibes, and lgbt romances will draw in fans of Walden's previous book as well as those who enjoy graphic artists like Noelle Stevenson and Emily Carroll.

Tillie Walden’s Spinning was one of the first graphic novels I read and I ADORED it. So when I heard she had another book coming out, I knew I needed to read it! And somehow, I loved this one even more.

On a Sunbeam is set in outer space. Mia is the main character who joins a team of people that rebuilds structures on different planets. We follow Mia as she gets to know her new crew, but we also see flashbacks from when Mia was in boarding school where she fell in love. Of course she never stopped thinking about her first love and wants to find her again.

The story is beautiful and Tillie’s artwork is fantastic. It has so much feeling and completely pulls you in. I’m partial to science fiction and stories set in space anyway, but add Tillie Walden’s gorgeous artwork and I’m in heaven.

If you’re also a graphic novel fan, pick this one up. And if you’ve never read a graphic novel, this is a perfect way to start!

Thank you to First Second and NetGalley for sending me this gorgeous ARC!

So much imagination and heart.this is a stunning piece of work that left me contemplating my existence by the end of it.

I loved the diverse characters, but the story could be very difficult to follow at times. The art could be too abstract or subtle for me to even recognize where the characters were at times. I did enjoy the multiple relationships among the characters and wanted some of them to be more fleshed out.

Surprisingly slow paced for a graphic novel. And given the length, that's not really in it's favor. This is a marathon, not a sprint. And it's not always the clearest plot. I really struggled to understand what was going on, what the ultimate aims were, how this world was structured.As the plot progresses, some of that confusion was cleared up but not all of it.

It really took about 1/3 of the way through On a Sunbeam for the story to really catch me, which is a lot for an over 500 page book. That said, once the story really hooked me, I was completely hooked and finished the book in one sitting.

One Sentence Synopsis: Space, boarding schools, and a breathtaking romance brought to life by it’s extremely impressive art.

Why You Should Be Reading: On a Sunbeam feels like a twist on what we know about traditional interstellar stories. There is the bleak desolation that comes with a world outside of Earth. Oh and the found family aspect that always comes with books/storylines/plots such as these. Both present throughout On a Sunbeam. But part of it (at least for me) doesn’t matter or register to me because of how remarkable Walden’s world is and how much you’re in love with the romance between Mia and Grace.

We don’t get to see LGBT stories too often, especially ones with a background in sci-fi. But Walden does it and succeeds. She took a risk and is now reaping the benefits of her masterful work of a space opera. And frankly, this is the kind of stuff I wouldn’t mind seeing more of on my TV screen. Not so subtle hint, TV studios and execs!

Genres: Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Comics, LGBT

Other Books by Tillie Walden: A City Inside, I Love This Part, Spinning

Learn more about the author HERE.

Buy On a Sunbeam HERE.

Add On a Sunbeam to your Goodreads HERE.