I started reading this and I could not stand the art and the writing wasn’t much better. I hated it and won’t be finishing the book.

An enjoyable and beautifully illustrated read.
Based on real women, this is a fictionalized account of the Femen, a group of radical feminists in Western Europe who protest for women's rights by going topless and training like a militia.
The story takes us through a couple of years in the life of Apoline, a typical French woman working in advertising - with an absolute POS boss who encourages her to be silent eye candy for clients while he gives credit to the young men in the office. We see Apoline battle with her mother and sister over when she will find herself a "nice man," and jerks on the street who catcall and harass her and other women. Even her friends are kind of crappy to be honest.
It's not until she sees some reports about Femen that she starts to find the courage to speak up and speak out, even though the other women in the group warn her that her life as she knows it could be over if she joins them.

Not exactly what I expected when I picked this ARC up from NetGalley, but I enjoyed this fictionalized account of the struggles one young woman faces as she decides to stand up for what she believes in by joining the Femen movement and their protests.

his was interesting, but the loop in time really botters me.. I really wosh that gives more information about FEMEN or take a little more focus at the protest.

I really wanted to like this book just for it's beautiful artwork but the femen organization felt really cultish and hostile to me. I have no bias against femen, I am a female and I believe we shouldn't be objectified and harrassed. But the way this organization goes about things feels more like a riot than a protest, cussing at people won't change their minds and running around topless won't make them respect you. The ending was odd, it ends abruptly after a failed "protest" then it picks up years later for some reason.
rating: 1 star

I won’t lie, I hadn’t actually heard of the Femen group before. It was interesting to read about them but that, and the art style, was all I really enjoyed about this. The characters felt flat and as soon as our attention was beginning to rise, it was over after a massive time jump.

I did not download this before the archive date and will not have a chance to review it.

What I like about this book is it introduced me about Femen movement that I haven’t heard before.
Also for some part of the book that relatable.

The story is told rather fast. And not all fast pace stories are bad. But, I feel there are missing parts on this one.
The ending for me was “wait... what? is that it?” I couldn’t believe it was ended.
The whole book is confusing to me. Personally, it left me feeling uncomfortable.

*Disclaimer: I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This graphic novel introduced me to the Femen, an activist group fighting against the patriarchy which I had never previously heard of.

I liked the narrative of this book. I've seen other reviews complain that the book doesn't actually show any of the protests but this didn't bother me. I liked how the story showed how becoming an activist can effect someone's life, in both positive and negative ways.

Having said that, I did have some issues with the book. Firstly I found that there was too much dialogue on some pages and it made the dialogue a little confused. Also, and this is something you can see on the cover, it annoyed me that all of the women's body types were exactly the same. I almost feel that this went against the message of the story itself. Overall, I'm glad I read this but I would have liked to see a little more diversity in the characters.

Thank you Net Galley for providing this free copy in trade for an honest review.

This review is also posted in my blog : https://onewordtoomuch.wordpress.com/2018/02/23/diary-of-a-femen/

Here we follow the story of a young Parisian girl who seems lost to the society. She just hated how society treated her only for her good looks and body. I don’t feel that this story has a strong background and character. What I notice is the girls who joined the Femen are too young and confused. This type of personality got easily lured into an extremist organization without understanding what they are getting into.

Although in general the whole story is indeed a good study of a feminist organization, I found the story quite weak and pathetic. It’s a pretty quick read. I like the illustration style. Some of it focused on the eyes of the characters, so shows real emotion and quite detailed.

Recommend for those who wants to read the workings of the Femen organization.

This comic “doesn’t strictly reflect reality…but everything in these pages is true.”

I’ve never heard of the Femen activists before I read this comic. (Though I just heard them referenced on TV the night after I heard of them!)

Bold and brave, they are protesting and changing things in their own way.

Interesting and worth a read.

<i>Thanks to NetGalley and Europe Comics for a copy in return for an honest review.</i>

This was actually my first graphic novel ever. It wasn't exactly bad? But I couldn't see the point either.
The whole thing was just a "WHY??" for me.

Though I love this book for actually introducing me to the 'Femen Movement'. I didn't know about it.

It's basically feminists protesting topless, cos 'nudity is there weapon' or something like that.
But overall I just couldn't see the point of this book. It didn't even show the ACTUAL protest. It just began and....whoosh...it ended.

It was a quick read so i don't actually regret reading it? Cos lets admit it, it told me shit i didn't know about. So that's brownie points, i guess.

I read this to learn a bit more about the group and thought it showed effects of the objectification of women well, and how different women fight against this in different ways. I wasn't the biggest fan of the illustration style though and found some of the scenes didn't really work.

Not for me or our libraries. The story was okay. The art was not for me either.

This was a nice comic about FEMEN, a feminist movement that I had heard of but knew little about. While it did not particularly delve into the philosophy of the movement, which even the book makes clear was not the author's intention, it was an interesting take on what motivates someone to join the movement and the consequences that they face.

I did think that the boyfriend character and epilogue were unnecessary. The boyfriend left in one short text and came back in the same way, without having any growth or real role other than to give the protagonist a typical "happy ending."

The illustrations were very nice and interesting, managing to convey a lot of emotion. While there was a fair amount of nudity, it was never gratuitous, fitting with the organization's message. I thought the dialogue generally worked well, although it got a bit confusing a couple of times. This could possibly simply be due to it being a translation.

To wrap things up, this is a good comic that covers a group that should be taken more seriously, with good artwork as well. In spite of a couple of chunks in the narrative I enjoyed the work.

I recently found out about this graphic novel because I was surfing on netgalley and instantly thought it would be a really good reading for me, as a feminist.
It's a really good work that shows how hard is it for women to live like they want, to show the world that they're (we're) not objects, we're people who think, have opinions, have feelings and that's just a little part of the problem. Diary of a Femen is just the right representation of the role of the woman in the society and it shows that we need to speak out and not stay put because otherwise no one will listen.

Loved this graphic novel because of the themes the author dealt with, because of the style and because of the message that he tries to make people understand. Absolutely a must for feminists but also for people who don't and don't want to understand the situatione!

Firstly thank you to Netgalley for the free ebook. 4/5 stars, I loved this graphic novel and didn't know much about the Femen movement in Ukraine or Paris. The story starts with Appoline in a job where she is looked down on and with an overbearing mother and a sister who thinks she has it all sorted out. This is about her journey realising she doesn't want to deal with the everyday sexism that she is experiencing and joins the Femen group despite backlash from friends and family trying to be "helpful". The artwork is fantastic, bright and colourful and really shows this group in a positive light despite some people labelling them "Feminazis". This book doesn't claim to be a true story but uses the real experiences of the women from that group to tell a story that couldn't be made more gripping by lies.

I love graphic novels, they are a way to quickly submerse myself into the world and visions of the author/illustrator. Diary of a Femen opened my eyes to a whole different world and awakened in me the realisation that as much as the world has progressed in the past 100 years since women in the UK gained the vote, the opinions, comments and actions of men and women are keeping a faster pace of progress at bay, definitely a novel to make a girl think! Whilst at times I got a little confused between the characters being followed once it focused on to a single narrative line I rapidly became engrossed and willing femen on.
Would I recommend this book? too right I would, men and women should read, think and talk about this book and the issues it raises.

The examples of sexual harassment here were spot on, and, therefore very cringeworthy. But, otherwise, lots of gratuitous language and sex that seemed beside the point of the story. Also lagged in places ( training for. Example). Just ok for me.

I really enjoyed this graphic novel about a young woman who joins FEMEN.

This book is described by the authors as 'realist fiction'. It is their own understanding about the organisation FEMEN, but expressed in fiction, and in this case their understanding is expressed in a graphic novel.

FEMEN (we are told in the book) is an internationalist feminist movement. Their defining characteristic is organising topless protests. Their struggle is against patriarchy, through what they see as its three main pillars - dictatorship, the church and the sex industry

The story is told through Appoline, who is a young french woman who lives in Paris. She experiences all kinds of micro aggressions everyday because she is a woman. At work she is expected to use her breasts and look alluring so that her ad agency will get contracts from clients. Her mother expects her to get married and give birth to children. On the street she is subjected to unwanted admiration and chat up lines from men who don't back away nicely when rejected and the streets do not feel safe.

Appoline experiences what women experience to a greater or lesser degree everyday of their lives and she finds it oppressive. Is this really what it means to be a woman in 21st century France? She feels that she is being oppressed and she is. When she discovers FEMEN and sees a protest on the internet she makes enquiries and decides to join them, or at least find out more.

She attends their training and becomes an activist. When Appolonia joins them she discovers that this nudity and exposure isnt alluring like she needed to be at work, it is aggressive. Nudity here is a weapon. She joins FEMEN, weathers the cost and the impact on her life and she grows as a person.

I hadn't heard of FEMEN before reading this book and I was totally engrossed by Appoline's story. As a community activist and female priest I thought this was a fascinating, especially because FEMEN see the Church as a patriarchal institution. The artwork is good. It is a clearly drawn graphic novel using lots of colour and a good dialogue.

My only criticism is that it ended rather abruptly. There was a sudden leap from a protest to '3 years later'. Where is the rest? What happened in between?

In any case I still enjoyed this and I learnt something too. It is a great story and a good introduction to FEMEN as well https://femen.org/about-us/

Copy provided by Europe Comics via Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.