I always think it's forever A love story set in Paris as told by an unreliable but earnest narrator

Artist Goodman (Sharpie Art Workshop: Techniques and Ideas for Transforming Your World) recalls a failed relationship in this tender if uneven illustrated memoir. After a year of neglecting his mental health, Goodman visited Paris, where he fell in love with a Frenchwoman named Aimée. Four months later, Goodman returned home to New York City alone, and the couple eventually broke up, which sent Goodman into a spiral of depression. After therapy and medication, he was diagnosed with attachment disorder, partially the result of his traumatic upbringing (his first stepdad physically abused him). Goodman makes no bones about his vulnerability ("Breakups take a big toll on me") as he plumbs the depths of his despair, but Aimée remains frustratingly opaque: other than her love of Britney Spears and astrology, she is solely defined as the object of Goodman's affection. The whimsical illustrations evoke Keith Haring's graffiti-like pop art, though they feel oddly buoyant in contrast to the melancholy material. Still, this emotionally raw narrative will resonate with anyone who has endured heartbreak. Agent: Jesseca Salky, Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Jan.)

A graphic memoir about romance in Paris. In 2019, coming off a year of major depression, noted artist and graphic designer Goodman wanted to "do something big for myself--not for my career, not for someone else, not for some impossible facade I could never keep up with because of fear." He decided to move to Paris for six months, learn French, and eat "all the baguettes." While he was there, he met Aimée, who gave him a "tingly feeling I hadn't felt since I was a teen." After only a few months, the author committed wholeheartedly to the relationship. "I was thinking about wedding pictures," he writes. Unfortunately, the romance didn't survive Goodman's move back to New York City, and the challenges of a long-distance relationship proved too much for the couple. Eventually, they met in Rome and broke up. This book, illustrated in Goodman's characteristic Sharpie-based style, is his attempt to create "art out of my own heartache." The story of his brief but intense love affair is a jumping-off point for the author to excavate his own traumas and vulnerabilities, beginning with the departure of his biological father when Goodman was only 18 months old. The author also delves into some of his other unlucky relationships with women, and he includes a brief, post-breakup interlude. Goodman casts himself as the starry-eyed romantic of the book's title, a "sentimental" person who "cries to The Internon a two-hour-long flight to Chicago." He is overwhelmingly open about his emotions about the breakup, noting that when a rumor reached him that his ex may have been unfaithful to him, he got drunk and "wrote two intense emails to my therapist like I was 2Pac in his prime." Goodman's willingness to bare it all is touching, but the end result feels more like a blog than a cohesive book. An intermittently moving tale of love and loss in the City of Light. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.