This book is a wonderfully drawn graphic novel which tackles many difficult troubles. It talks about racism, tiger parents, abuse, depression, anxiety and suicide. It never romanticizes these things, thankfully. The art fits the topics perfectly.

The ending felt rather abrupt and sudden. Which makes sense, because it’s a memoir and all, but it felt a bit jarring to me. I would have liked for some more reflection on the topics, but I also realize that’s not necessarily what a memoir is.

I have been following Deb JJ Lee for a while now after meeting them at Comic Arts LA. I love their work so when I saw this ARC go up on Netgalley I had to snag it! Luckily I was approved to read it and it did not disappoint! I really enjoyed the story and the perspective I gained from it. I also love the illustrations, but I already followed the author's art on social media so I may be a little biased, hehe. Any who, I highly recommend reading it and I'm looking forward to buying it both for my personal and work libraries.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC to review.

5 stars!


I adored this. The artwork is STUNNING.

This was a hard read because of how much I related to it since it focuses on many topics/ themes, one being mental health.

I also currently live in S.Korea, so my experiences here and the people that I know, I have sadly heard, witnessed, listened and seen people act to cruel to others. And can't imagine the struggles and pain POC go through.

This was truly amazing.

In Limbo is a stunning debut graphic novel about the author, Deb JJ Lee's transition from living and growing up in South Korea to attending high school in America. Full of stories about their friendships, growing up, being Korean, and their struggles with mental health, this graphic novel navigates everything flawlessly and with tremendous care.

I'm not even sure where to begin. Lee's art in this book leaps off the page from the first illustrations of them and their brother swimming. The blues that Lee chose to use throughout this graphic novel were both calming and sad, mixing peace with turmoil as they gave weight and narrated their own intense struggles with mental health and suicide.

From a personal standpoint, I feel like this book is so powerful and had to be told through Lee's chosen medium as art. There is something so emotional about the way Lee illustrates the messy and painful memories, blending them together into a blue haze. I really related to the friendship and mental health struggles through this book, as it is truly difficult to see how your own mental health can quickly and deftly begin to impact others in an explosive manner.

I look forward to more by Deb JJ Lee. Not only is their art wonderful, but they clearly have an incredibly knack for storytelling. First Second Books continues to produce and publish incredible debuts and I can't wait to see what else comes from Lee down the line!

Thank you to NetGalley and First Second Books for providing me with a copy for an honest review!

Content warnings: suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, child abuse, racism, slurs, anxiety depiction

This is a gorgeously illustrated book, the art style is fantastic and unique, with almost a watercolor-type quality to its shading. The story is very real and honest, a look back at the author's high school years and the turbulence she experienced. Deb's family emigrated to the US when she was very young, cutting her off (she feels) from her Korean heritage and setting her up to be othered by her American peers. She finds solace in orchestra, the only class she enjoys and has friends in. But, this changes when she enters high school and realizes she has no more passion for music, and makes the switch to art. This coincides with increased pressure in high school, both academically and socially, and problems with home as fights with her mother get worse. Deb hits rock bottom hard, and struggles with her mental health until finally leveraging her inner strength to move past what's keeping her down. I love graphic memoirs, and this one was well-written, well-illustrated, and a topic that many readers will find relatable.

THis is a very painful memoir of the author's life in high school, where no one can pronounce her Korean name, so she doesn’t bother with it, and she has trouble making friends.
Her mother wants her to be all STEM oriented, and she just wants to do art. Sometimes her mother understands her, sometimes her mother does not, and strikes her.
Her friends drift away. She tries suicide. She tries her best to make amends to her friends.

All very painful, but also very deep and personal. In the author's note at the end, she said that she consolidated some friends, changed things that were said, but the things her mother did, she has kept the same, and allowed her mother to read it. Her mother said she could tell the story her way, and the only thing she asked was that she was made to be made pretty.

This was a book I read in one sitting. I wanted to know how it would all turn out, thought, because it was a memoir, we knew the main character lives.

As memoirs are, we get to see the hurt and pain, as well as the joy as the author remembers it. The microaggressions. The bipolarness of her mother. All the good mixed with the bad.

<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

I want to start by thanking the publisher, NetGalley and everyone involved in allowing me early access to this ebook.

I want to do a personal disclaimer for starters: I don’t believe in rating memoirs, biographies and similar books. I think people’s lives cannot be reduced to a number. Every life experience is valid and valuable. So, when rating books like this one, I rate the way they made me feel, the way the narrative reaches me and how I connect as a reader. It’s a very personal rating.

TW: be aware that this book deals with mental health problems and portraits a suicide attempt

“In limbo” is the authors’ experience as a South Korean young girl living in the States. As a result of having emigrated as a young toddler, Deborah Jung-Jin always felt she didn’t belong. She wasn’t American but she also didn’t identify with her birth country and we feel her loneliness through the book. I felt the color scheme (in the blue/grey tones) really brought to life this feeling, which is not easy. I felt Deborah’s loneliness, her doubts and the several ways she felt she didn’t fit. Life was not easy, but I want to believe it’s better now 🧡

I don’t read that much graphic novels to have a lot to compare this book with, but I was truly immersed in this story. I felt the drawings gave so much to the reader that sometimes words weren’t even necessary. The silence was really powerful here. It’s one of those we easily forget we are reading and it was with a lot of surprise that I reach the end. I just wanted to know how Deborah’s life turnout and expect she has found happiness along the way.

This is Deborah’s debut novel. I want to wish her the best success with it. Perhaps she never reads my review, but, if by chance she does, I want to wish her the best of luck with her career. She is so talented!

This review will also be available on my Goodreads account and, as requested by the publisher, closer to pub date it will be up on my Instagram account - @cat.literary.world

This was only my second graphic memoir but wow, it's all I want to read from now on!

Reading Deb JJ Lee's stories through the illustrations and conversations throughout In Limbo was incredibly nostalgic, reflective, and moving. It's perfectly marketed as YA as it brings you back to what it's like to be a young girl with complicated friendships.

Not only does Deborah (Jung-Jin) struggle with navigating her friendships with her friends, but also with her Korean family who she feels disconnected from. She grapples with how to find her place in America, in her family, and with her friends while also battling severe mental health issues.

I read it in less than 24 hours because I just couldn't put it down. You could spend hours analyzing the art in this book - it really added to the story by providing so many little details so my only recommendation is to take your time!

Thank you to First Second Books and NetGalley for an eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The art in this book is so pretty. I was mesmerized by a lot of it. I enjoyed the book but I feel as though it had an abrupt ending. It felt as though I wanted more but this is the authors life and she's just saying what she lived through so.

I received an arc through netgalley.

High school is rough. Rougher still when you and your family are stuck straddling two cultures, never feeling fully welcome in one or the other, or when your mental illness starts to control your thoughts and life and you don't yet have any skills to cope. 'In Limbo' follows young Jung Jin (also known as Deb) as she deals with the horrors of high school and the changes it brings, the horrors of moms and the trauma it brings, and the horrors of mental illness and the havoc it brings.

I enjoyed reading this story for its honesty and openness, I think young readers will be drawn to the author's transparency and will find a lot in it to relate to. In addition, to the absolutely stunning art work, the story addresses really important topics including race, trauma, depression, anxiety, toxic friendship, and suicide. But, I think it's important for young people to see that other people have gone through the sad and angry years and come out the other side and also the benefit that therapy can provide.

However, critically speaking, I didn't see what this story adds or offers to what's already out there. The book seemed to dance around the very things that would've set her story apart from anecdotal storytelling - for instance, the grappling with her mother's abuse or even the toxic friendship with Quinn. Why not dig into those topics instead of drily reporting their chronology of events? What is the critical examination here? High school is hard and awful but I think 95% of people who went to high school could tell you that. The interesting questions are why was it hard for this person specifically (beyond my mom was awful and I felt unloved by friends). I would've liked to see and to read more about it.

this is a graphic memoir about Deb's experience being a diaspora teen in America. She never felt like she's fit into her surrounding, never had much friends and then she developed attachment issue with the ones she had. not to mention her mom's never-ending expectation towards her. simply put, Deb's teenage life was rough.

The story was so raw. I love the illustrations that gave detailed imagery. It's almost like watching Deb's early life unfold right in front of my eyes in monotone colors. Proud of Deb for sharing her experience to the world❤️

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide, mental health, child abuse, abuse, bullying & racism

Speaking from experience with suicide and attempting and the outer and internal struggle you face because of it, I truly felt understood by this graphic novel. Suicide is genuinely a spiral, sometimes, small or large or mundane things can cause a domino effect, and you have to go through it until you reach a breaking point.
Many of the experiences faced in this memoir were similar; bullying, harsh home life, hard time making and keeping friends and depression. So many experiences for many of us who have attempted or lived with suicidal tendencies can feel this while still being different.

This book is deep, dark, raw and realistic; I recommend it for a read for perspective and enlightening on the subject and seeing the life of someone.

This was a beautifully done graphic novel that touched on multiple hard subjects in an honest and tender way. A lot of different themes were covered in this story, mental health, parental pressure, cultural pressure, the struggle of friendships, but it never felt overwhelming.

I especially love the theme touching on how those in your life can have their problems going on as well, some that you might not know about.

Deb JJ Lee does an amazing job of capturing teenage loneliness and depression. Deb was born in Korea, but raised in America, and feels like she is both Korean and America, and neither. She has a difficult relationship with her mother, and few friends. She struggles through school and home life, desperate for friendship and attention. Lee shows with unflinching detail all the embarrassing, cringey feelings of a depressed teen with few outlets.

This was an amazing memoir in drawing form, it really give us the reader a good insight of what is to be born to an emigrant family and then being raised in a foreign culture and thus not really belonging in the culture of the parents nor the one that is around her in America.

If you like me are interested in Asian culture, you’ve have probably watched, fresh out of the boat and Kim's supermarket, and already have an idea of the pressure Asian parents put on their offspring, not because they don’t love them, but because they want the best for their kids, for them to be successful and you can only be successful if you work hard, yes the love that Asian parents show to their children can be seen as cold but is the best that they can do in their stressful life.

I did enjoy very much this book, the art is realistic but really good, if can make you feel immersed in the story, but I want to leave an advice for a trigger, this is a real story, and as in real stories, we have real pain, and if talks about self injury and an almost suicide and how the narrator was able to surpass that. And also talks about the necessity to fit in and by that the narrator had the necessity to change a thing in herself through surgery, but to know more about that I advice you to read this graphic book. I highly recommend this graphic memoir book.

Thank you NetGalley and first second books for the free ARC and this is my honest opinion.

Thank you to the publisher for giving me a free copy of this comic in exchange for an honest review.

Wow.... this comic was such an important read. Not only does it cover being mixed but it also shows the aspect having to deal with the bullying of your classmates very well and how it affects the person, which I thought was very important and interesting to read.

Things such as: judging someone's name because it's not somethibg you know of. Disgusting comments about ethnicity, being assuming all asians are chinese etc etc etc

I thought it was an amazing educative read and I would recommend reading this since I really feel like it could help people and even make people understand.

Stunning, spectacular and utterly moving. In Limbo is a truly heartfelt memoir told through incredible artwork.

Wow. Words can’t describe how impactful this memoir is to me. I understood the protagonist’s emotions and hardships and I love the art style so much. Definitely a recommended memoir to read.

Debbie learns thru many ups and downs, how to survive high school and relationship issues when dealing with issues related to heritage and it’s role in society and her everyday family life. A coming of age tale, represented thru the eyes of a Korean American teen as she grasps with living life in limbo learning to understand the space she abides in.

I don’t usually read graphic novels so I can’t comment on whether this was an objectively good one, but what I can say for sure is that it’s heartfelt and sincere. This is a graphic memoir, so it’s based on the author’s own experiences and struggles growing up Korean in America, where she feels desperately unable to fit in. This book deals with a variety of teenage difficulties, such as navigating friendships, self-image and complex parental relationships. Do note that this graphic novel also contains scenes pertaining to self-harm and suicide, with mental health being a central theme of the book. Altogether, I thought that this was a beautifully illustrated coming-of-age graphic memoir that I'm sure many young adults will definitely be able to relate to.