Continuing with my second reading goal of 2019 of reading more independent books, I read Bitter Pill which was written in 2008 by Kevin Richardson who has re-releasing it on blogspot as he is also working on launching a new updated story. As mentioned on the blog spot Richardson first labor of love was comics and drawing dinosaur and you can tell the story telling comes from a place of love too. He has also been published in various independent publications including Approbation Comics, Candy or Medicine, and the Pantheon.
This story covers many heavy topics, which can be hard for some people to deal with from sexual assault, abuse, suicide, race and depression, so if those are somethings that trigger you; this book may not be for you. While I still think the topics are handled well and written good, I always like to let people know before going into it more, and because of these topics this book is a very mature book. Bitter Pill is a story about Dorian Smart, a recent college graduate loser dealing depression, and trying to find his place in the world. While I mentioned some of the possible trigger warnings, I think Richardson does a good way covering these topics, and still making a very entertaining book. While the book covers many topics, the book is really about the relation Dorian has with three people. The first person is Dorian’s friend Mel, your typical guy who thinks he’s a ladies man, but really is just your everyday cocky annoying loser. The second is Azure, his on and off again white girlfriend who has been dealing with a lot of baggage. And third is himself, as he’s dealing with many issues and baggage of his own, it shows how he can go from being the hopeful college graduate to someone who pretty much hates the world.
The art in the book is set up very similar to a newspaper comic strip. While the art isn’t the driving force to the book it adds the extra bit needed to keep the story rolling, and help add to the emotion of the story. I really enjoyed the letter of this book, however I would also say that it is one of the weakest points as I read it on my phone in some parts it was hard to make out the words when I had it zoomed in. While this isn’t really the lettering’s fault and mostly the small screen, with a blog comic you’d assume a lot of the readers would be doing it on smaller screened devices.
Overall: 3.5/5 – If you can get passed the heavy topics, Bitter Pill is a great story painting a picture of a loser who may be more similar to yourself then you know. I’m really looking forward to see what comes of Dorian Smart in the coming year!
What is your reading goal of 2019? Know any independent books I should look into? Any book you’d like me to review? Hit me up on Facebook or let me know in the comments!
