Lunar New Year Love Story, by Gene Luen Yang and LeUyen Pham, is a YA graphic novel about love, family and tradition, with lots of lion dancing.

Teenage Valentina used to love Valentine’s Day and her magical friend St Valentine, a cutie little Cupid that only Valentina can see. But as she gets older and discovers more of her family history, she starts to hate the holiday. When her dad’s mother reveals the family secret, Valentina’s sure she is doomed to be another generation of tragic, failed romance.  Cute Cupid Valentine is replaced with a scary martyr-ghost St Valentine, and since so many romances end in heartbreak, she wonders whether falling in love is ever worthwhile.

Ghostly-martyr St Valentine offers to take Valentina’s heart forever, so she can avoid the pain of loss. It’s a dark bargain, and although Valentina desperately wants to skip heartbreak and the family curse of tragic relationships,  she’s not quite ready to give up her heart.  So they agree on a year to consider, and St Valentine will return to take her heart away next Valentine’s Day. Over the year, Valentina will date boys, get to know her estranged relatives, and consider whether she wants to protect herself by giving up her heart or keep it and risk more pain and suffering.

Magical elements in fiction can be hit-or-miss for me, but here it works well. I loved the way cutie-cupid St. V added an adorable whimsy to the panels of everyday life, and then I liked how creepy martyr St. V appeared in the shadows of Valentina’s regular life. These magical elements worked well with the everyday world, too.  Besides, why wouldn’t Valentine’s Day / Lunar New Year be an enchanted time for Valentina Tran?

One of the things that I really liked in Lunar New Year Love Story is that there’s not really a villain in the story, just a lot of rough circumstances. Valentina’s entire world is upset when she discovers that her mother hasn’t really died, she’s just left the family. Valentina’s understandably upset about it. But her father first kept that secret to keep baby Valentina from feeling rejected, and his awkward, protective love for her motivated his actions. Her grandmother has her own reasons for keeping quiet and then for telling Valentina everything. And even Valentina’s jerk boyfriend isn’t trying to hurt her, he just doesn’t want to have one girlfriend when he could have ALL the girlfriends, and he’s pretty clear about it.

There are universal coming-of-age questions in this story, as Valentina considers how she is and is not like her family, if she’s doomed to repeat her parents’ mistakes, if romantic love is worth it.  The setting, including both the Asian-American background and the supernatural elements, makes this coming-of-age story unique and memorable. The art helps develop the setting too, with scenes of lion dance, high school life, and a visit to famous places in Rome.

I enjoyed the visual elements a lot, you can really see why this story is a graphic novel instead of all text. The story uses the beautiful backgrounds of Tet celebrations and a trip to Rome to remind Valentina of the beauty in the world, even if she has upsetting family secrets and bad news to cope with.  And these panels are just gorgeous.

Lunar New Year Love Story was a fun coming-of-age story, with something lovely and interesting to see on each page.