A precious story that I ended up loving! The water colour atmosphere made it the story stand out more.

Such a beautiful love story that transcends language. Sarah and PIng's friendship turned relationship is so sweet and interesting to read about with all of the nuances of language barriers. I really enjoyed their story, the illustrations, and the journey they both had to go on to decide to be together.

If you want a slow burn, this is definitely one. Sarah, British, is living in Paris, working for a firm that is draining her soul. Ping is in Paris, as a nanny to a Chinese family. They both speak English, some French and some Cantonese.


They keep running into each other, accidentally, and finally exchange numbers, and Sarah finds that there is brightness in Paris that wasn’t there before. She loves picking up more Cantonese, and we don’t see inside Ping’s head, but she seems to be enjoying their meetings as well.


Sarah doesn’t realize she is falling in love, and neither does Ping. They keep thinking they are really, really good friends. I think if we weren’t told this was an LGBTQ graphic novel, we might have delieved that. But we can see them getting close.


And the thing that really makes Sarah understand that there is something more that is despite them not knowing each other’s languages totatally, they do understand each other.


Sweet story. I kept wondering where it would all end up, and how it could all end up.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is coming out the 6th of May 2025.

As a language nerd, this was excellent. I loved the way the translations were shown, as well as the natural way the different languages were used in conversations. Also the jargon-laden descriptions of the workplace? Exquisitely clever. This was fantastic.

rep: queer white MC, queer Asian LI

spice: none

What if you are a foreigner working in a new place where you are learning to speak the language at the same time and you meet other foreigners who speak different language than you and are also learning a new language, too? This graphic novel answers this question, the icing on the cake being the blossoming of a meaningful friendship.

As a Cantonese speaker, I find myself drawn to the Romanized Cantonese layer of bubbles sprinkled throughout the book. As a woman who has worked in a toxic workplace before, I can also relate to the main protagonist's experiences of a toxic work environment. As someone who appreciates art as well, I love how the main characters bond over art in the Louvre. The book definitely has relatable characters.

Taking place in France, this book gives a fresh perspective on romance and the angst that can consume someone who is newly in love. The interracial and intercultural context adds delightful layers to this story of the budding of a queer romance. Overall, a wonderful read.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Love Languages by James Albon is a Sapphic graphic novel focusing on a friendship and later romance between a British woman and a Hong Kongese woman living in Paris. Sarah works in an office in France and is struggling with using every day French and with her office’s decisions. She meets Ping, an au pair, and the two become friends and learn each other’s languages.

One of the artistic details I loved was the use of Cantonese and French throughout and how the dialogue would switch between the two and English (along with English translations). It helps immerse the reader in how Sarah and Ping communicate while also being great practice for anyone learning Cantonese or French (though the Cantonese is mostly depicted with romanization and tone indicators instead of traditional Chinese characters). It’s a very effective choice that I adore because I love it when other languages are highlighted in English language works since so many English speakers speak one or more other languages.

The painterly style of the art utilizes a vibrant range of watercolors and a very distinct art style that feels very French-British. Humans are more stylized rather than realistic and the backgrounds have some lovely details. I’m used to more of a manga style and works with softer but still realistic styles, so it’s nice to have something different every once in a while to show the diversity of art in comics and graphic novels.

The friendship between Sarah and Ping takes a bit to get going because Sarah is very stuck in her own head and thinks that she’s a bother, but she was also very embarrassed when they first met, so she struggled to give Ping a chance. Ping’s kindness and acknowledgement of the two of them being two non-Parisians living in Paris for work helps set the groundwork for them to get together. I loved Sarah try harder to learn Cantonese and how they developed their own language that only they know, creating their own little world.

Content warning for brief depictions of homophobia and harassment

I would recommend this to fans of graphic novels discussing themes of immigration and readers who love interracial and intercultural Sapphic romances

5 stars for the artwork in Love Languages - beautifully illustrated and colored, the artwork is lively, the colors set the mood and there's a lot of energy and emotion in the lines and colors.

The story is 4 stars for me as the characters felt a bit flat and the supporting characters were a bit simplistic but I appreciate the depictions of awkward conversations using snippets of different languages and gestures as well as the evolution of language acquisition for both Sarah and Ping, the main characters.

I did enjoy this quick read, I loved seeing all the details of Parisian and Hong Kong life and I think fans of middle/high school graphic novels would enjoy Love Languages.

Many thanks to NetGalley and IDW Publishing for the e-arc.

*3.5 stars rounded up to 4 stars*

This was a lushly colored adult graphic novel (but appropriate for YA, too, in my opinion) about a lonely FMC trying to find a connection while living and working abroad in France. Our FMC eventually does make a connection, and we get to follow their friendship that follows, both speaking different native languages and meeting in the middle with French. As someone who lived abroad in South Korea for three years, I really enjoyed the depiction of learning a new language and trying to keep up in a culture different than yours surrounded by a language you are trying to learn. It was very relatable and well done.

Things I really enjoyed:
- The use of color in various scenes to depict emotions and mental states
- The depiction of learning a second language and living in a country and culture different than your own
- The friendship the two fmcs developed over time

Things that weren't for me:
- There were a lot of expositional moments that didn't feel like they fit the graphic novel. Sometimes there was a lot of telling not showing.
- Things got quite descriptive of work and other things at time, when I felt they could have been shown a different way. These parts dragged for me.

Overall, this was an enjoyable experience. I appreciated the ending and the journey our main protagonist went through to get to the end. I definitely recommend this book to other expats! You will feel seen and understood through this graphic novel.

I didn't know what to expect from this book, but I am pleasantly surprised.
It was a beautiful, touching story about two women who did not understand each other's languages, but nevertheless understood everything about each other. This book does a great job of showing what conversations are like between people who speak multiple languages. I laughed, smiled and felt my heart grow. On top of all this, the art is beautiful. I recommend this if you want to read something quick that will make you feel better.

I enjoyed this graphic novel about language, friendship and finding a place to belong.

Though I liked the art and the story was sweet and a bit sad, the novel was a bit hard to read at times. There are a lot of word-things going on. But mixing English, French and Cantonese was an interesting choice and must have been hard to illustrate. Like I said, a bit difficult to read and takes longer time to get through than most graphic novels. But I would definitely recommend this one to anyone who likes to take their time and reflect on what they’re reading. And who likes languages.

It’s also a sweet story of a budding friendship, a sad one about not fitting in at work, in a language, in an community and a hopeful one about falling in love.

/ Denise

I decided to give this a try because I loved the idea of a romance where understanding and communication played such a role in the dynamic. This had a lot of sweet moments between Ping and Sarah, but also in some ways it was kind of a boring read, especially with Sarah’s work which I found hard to follow. Overall I enjoyed it, but it didn’t quite wow me or hit me in the emotions like I would have liked.

Love Languages is a heart-warming graphic novel that so perfectly describes the motion that goes from feeling lost and lonely in a foreign country to slowly, yet suddenly finding friendship, love, and home in that same foreign land.

We follow Sarah, an accomplished English consultant who works in Paris for an American multinational company. Her career's success, however, does not bring her happiness. Struggling with the French language and culture, her life is literally tinted blue. She feels quite lonely and unsatisfied, especially outside of her job, and even at work the eloquent language that she and her colleagues use seems void of any meaning, utter corporate gibberish.

It is Ping, a carefree girl from Hong Kong, that will suddenly bring color and meaning to her life and to the graphic novel. Starting as an awkward initial exchange - made difficult with the struggle to communicate across languages - a fortuitous encounter slowly evolves into a beautiful friendship that will make Sarah change her perspective on life. Ping, in her bright yellow jacket, turns out to be the bright sun that Sarah needed. And what started as choppy communication blossoms into a language that is beautifully and utterly theirs.

I seriously loved this graphic novel, both its story and its style, especially in the choice of colors and in the way emotions and language exchanges are represented. I found extremely ingenious the way speech bubbles were used to include the translation, and how the translation bubbles progressively came to overlap completely the original language bubbles, to represent Sarah's improving understanding of French and Cantonese. Color is also very important in the narration. Sarah's work life is literally blue and her colleagues almost grotesque, drawn in a style that reminded me of Toulouse-Lautrec's. In contrast, Paris turns bright and colorful when Sarah is with Ping, and the tone of the whole graphic novel suddenly becomes warmer.

Overall, I found Love Languages utterly original and enjoyable and I particularly related to this story given that I myself personally experienced living abroad and finding love and home there. James Albon was able to create a love song that celebrates the deep and transformative connection that one can feel for another person, and how that one special relationship can change your place in the world and the way you look at everything that surrounds you. In its depiction of both the excitements and fears that are common to all love stories and friendships, the graphic novel also reveals how hard it is sometimes to find the correct words to describe your emotions, and the irony of that happening when you are fluent in multiple languages, which is literally my everyday struggle.

This was a really cute graphic novel! I liked how much language was involved in the story itself and how big of a role it played in the relationship between the two main characters. The art style of this was also soso gorgeous.

My only complaint is that the writing itself felt a little choppy, which really took me out of the story.

Thank you Netgalley and Top Shelf Productions for the advanced copy!

First off, the are is lovely, and the representation of the multilingual communication is VERY cool, especially at the point where the conversations start to flow. I did like this graphic novel, but a couple of things kept me from loving it.

One, the text-heavy format of the narrative didn't always work for me. It's strange to read a graphic novel that tells as much as it shows. Maybe if the text had felt more necessary, I would have liked it more--a graphic/prose hybrid isn't inherently a problem for me--but it sometimes felt like the text overexplained things that could have been conveyed through more imagery. I'm also... not really sure what happened in the third act breakup? That part felt really rushed, and I wish we'd either spent more time on it or had it explained more. If you're going to make your graphic story text-heavy, why not use it to explain what's happening more clearly? I found that the higher volume of text blocks ended up distracting me from the flow of the story by drawing my attention back to its format, or drawing my eye to the text and away from the images. I'm sure that's a matter of personal taste, but I was aware of it the whole time I was reading.

Two, and maybe this is a result of what I describe above, the romance between the main characters felt rushed. I felt like I was told that they fell hard for each other, but it didn't quite fit with the pacing. A lot of time is spent on the development of their communication, which I really appreciated, but the romance element felt abrupt.

This is the kind of three-star rating that's the result of me really enjoying some aspects of the book and being lukewarm on others. The text blocks left me with the sense that I'd been told to think something, rather than witnessing those emotions unfold more naturally. Perhaps I'm being too rigid in my expectations regarding what makes a graphic novel, but I finished this book feeling emotionally distanced from the characters. On the other hand, I've only read a handful of fictional works that spend as much discussing language as this one does. It's not too esoteric, either. It captures the *feeling* of navigating communication barriers without getting too lost in the weeds of linguistic tomfoolery.

I received this book as an ARC through NetGalley. My thoughts are my own.

I mean it was fine, but I could come to like the art style. I did like the multilinguality and how the story showed the struggle to communicate in a foreign language. It was cery cool. I didn't exactly like the pacing tho. It seemed off – at times it was too slow, and then it was too fast...

I'd like to send my thanks to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for providing a free pdf version of this comic in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely adored this graphic novel -- it's one of my absolute favorites that I've ever read at this point. The art was stunning and bursting with life and color. And I absolutely adored Ping and Sarah's characters and growth from strangers to friends to lovers. The language aspects of this book were so cool, I loved seeing so many represented here.

Thank you to James Albon, NetGalley and IDW Publishing for access to the digital ARC of this graphic novel in exchange for an unbiased review.

In the pandemic some of us took up making sourdough bread, I hopped on Duolingo and started to learn French. Not re-learn as in I had taken it in high school but as in learn, never having before taken a class or had a close relative speak in it or any other close connection to that language other than I thought why not?

This past history and if might flex here, very long streak, in Duolingo French learning was one of the reasons I was drawn into the story of Sarah and Ping, two "foreigners" living in Paris learning to acclimate to the culture and language. Sarah hailed from London and had a very soul-crushing corporate job. Ping comes from Hong Kong and after deciding not to teach to the test in schools there became an au pair for a rich Chinese family.

These two happen upon each other and thus begins a sweet if not awkward at first friendship where the two find themselves using English, French, Cantonese and even hand gestures to communicate with one another. I immediately related to the French slang that was not taught in Duolingo or as Sarah recalls nor in her college classes. The uncomfortable feeling of trying to comprehend and then make a statement that can be comprehended is conveyed beautifully in this story.

Sarah and Ping finding their own way to communicate was one speed bump to overcome but soon Sarah realizes that she may also be feeling more than friendship for Ping and when the realization that Ping is not just an amie but her amie, she jeopardizes the friendship and more.

The panels are beautiful, the translations are helpful and the very relatable uncomfortable human emotions of feeling foreign in a country and foreign in a relationship are worth the read.

This was short, cute and beautiful.
Not only the illustrations but also the language and the incredible visual representation.
Kudos for not discussing sexuality but showing love. My heart for Ping

I absolutely adored this story. It was sweet and had me rooting for them to get together and I was very happy with how it ended :)<3

“When I speak another language, I can almost catch a glimpse, an entrevoit, of myself as another person, and this new person can be described with new, exciting, scintillating words. The barrier between language and thought seems to melt away…of course, this lucidity is only fleeting.”

As a cultural and linguistic mediation student, this graphic novel was the cutest and best way to describe so many of these linguistic related feelings.
I loved the watercolours and the different shades used to express a certain mood. It’s definitely a light read, but there are also important messages and topics, such as the feeling of loneliness in a new city, the emptiness, the work-burnout, the academic path considered as the best and only one…and of course, languages and love.

I love the way dialogues are translated and how, as the chemistry between the main characters grows, they become clearer and wrapped in ribbons. There’s a very interesting work around the linguistic area, and I definitely appreciate it!