Brielle and Bear: Once Upon a Time : Book 1

A fairy-tale-obsessed fresher falls for the shy vice-captain of the rugby team.

Brielle and Bear: Once Upon a Time by Salomey Doku is the first book in this illustrated series. After four years away, Brielle returns to Rosebridge and starts at Once Upon a Time University, with a side job in a bookshop and her head full of fairy tales. Then she meets Bear, the quiet vice-captain of the Princes rugby team. What begins as a crush grows into something more real, except that Brielle prefers to keep her past at a distance and Bear turns out to be keeping a few things to himself too.

A young adult romance in graphic novel form, drawn entirely in colour, with exactly the soft atmosphere that gets you through a rainy afternoon. Lovely from around thirteen, and also great if you do not normally read comics but do love campus romances and fairy-tale references. English edition; you will finish it in no time and start straight on book two.