It's a really cute book about two people who don't fit anywhere else finding solace on friendship. Really beautiful illustrations with an equally beautiful story.

Zoc is a beautifully melancholic graphic novel with some great Ghibli-ish background art. Despite a very interesting premise, the story itself wasn’t that special but I would have definitely loved it back when I was a kid.

I recommend flipping through this just for the art style. Even if it doesn’t interest you as a reader, it only takes about 15 minutes and is full of bleak but beautiful scenery.

Thank you @NetGalley and @EuropeComics for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

(Thank you to Netgalley and Europe Comics for an eARC in exchange for an honest review)

This was such a cute read! The art style was so pretty and I loved the colour palette used. The ‘water carrying’ powers Zoc had were really cool and unique (although I can imagine super annoying to live with). The friendship between Zoc and Kael was adorable and I really loved the ending!

An adorable short read,safe to recommend to everyone! The art style and colours used really created a sense of comfort,and although the characters were quite blunt with each other,I'm surprised to say that it was enjoyable. The ending was extremely satisfying and so was reading about the friendship between Zoc and Kael.

I liked the story and thought it was sweet. At first I was confused about the world and how things worked but realised everything was "magical". Really liked the story and the characters were cute and felt real and not one note.

Original rating: 3.7/5. Thank you so much Netgalley for providing an ARC in exchange for honest opinion!

Though the premise is vey interesting, the writing isn't up to the mark. It was confusing at times, the shift between perspectives or dialogues weren't as smooth as I would like them to be. Overall it's a great book. The illustrations are pretty, painted with soft colors. I love how Zoc and Kael found their way to each other. It also shows how different everyone's reality is. Zoc feels she is living a hard life until she meets Kael whose family threw him on the street for his unusual and inconvenient gift. With Zoc's loving father and elder sister, she never had to worry about gaining their support. I love the message the story conveys- that everyone is important and has a purpose to fulfill. Recommended!

This is a strange little book. The characters are teens, but the plot feels too cerebral for teens to be interesting. It has this very lovely melancholy tone throughout. The book is just slightly surreal in a way that is very appealing. I like how Zoc develops over the story and I appreciate how the author doesn’t give us an easy answers about the morality of what Zoc is doing.

Unfortunately this one was a bit of a disappointment for me. I found the story really lacking. I wasn't engaged or invested in the story at all and honestly wouldn't have finished it if it wasn't as short as it was. No real time was given to build up the characters so that I was invested in Zoc, and instead I felt very apathetic towards everyone. The characters were very two dimensional and the simplistic art style had a real lack of expression that made it all fall very flat to me

Review to come July 23rd on blog/goodreads.

I received this book from Netgalley/the publisher in exchange of an honest review.

The premise sounded really interesting, a girl whose hair attracts water and she can apparently drag water along without any difficulty. Not to mention flooded towns, friendship, and more! I was in!

Well, the plan was good/eh, but in the end it was sadly mostly eh. I just was confused throughout the story.

😀 The friendship between the spiky boy and our MC. I loved how they bonded and how he stuck with her throughout her journey. How they talked. How she wasn't lonely and how he wasn't lonely either.
😀 Despite some issues, I did like that she was brave to accept that job and help those people out.
😀 It is an interesting idea that one can hold water with their hair and it doesn't matter how much water it is.
😀 I loved that the dad supported her ideas. OK, still a bit odd that you let your underage kid just do all these things, but hey I will take it.
😀 Loved the ending, now that is teamwork! No more damage and the problem gets solved.

😑 I just didn't get what her plan was with the flood? I mean, as the spiky kid says, isn't she doing WAY more damage than the flood that was there first? She just kept walking, and walking, and walking, and the first part was kind of OK, but then it just kept on being that, and I wondered where she was going, and I would have liked to know from the start, so I could root for her more. Plus, why is no one missing her? Are phones magical there as well in that they never run out? I am so confused.
😑 I would have kinda liked an introduction on how the girl was able to carry water around, and if that meant she was able to make it rain? Or something. I mean, people at times got angry at her, other times they did not. Sometimes it seemed she made rain, other times she didn't.
😑 So the world is magical? I mean, along the way she meets all sorts of odd mysterious people. A kid with spiky hair and grey skin (who also got some sort of backstory which I did enjoy though still confused me, haha). A minstrel who looks like a bird? It just was so confused. I really want GNs to just EXPLAIN things and not just throw you into the story and tell you good luck and have fun. Because I am not having fun if random stuff happens without at least some form of explanation.
😑 SO cutting off her hair allows her to just walk around? It is based on how long it is? Help?? And then it just grows back? WHUTTTTT??
😑 I get that a flooded town would want her help, but it seems odd that she is allowed, as a kid, to just go out and do that job without any adults or anyone to assist her or be there for her.
😑 The art. I am sorry, I was not a fan. There were odd bits here and there that just seemed weird. Sometimes people had yellow faces??? Or they were all white with blue clothes??
😑 The font. Can we just make the font in digital editions/review copies READABLE. I mean it shouldn't be so hard to make those just a tad more clearer and less blurry. Now at times, even with my new glasses, I just had to get very close to my screen, which partially ruined my reading experience.
😑 So someone was stalking her? And her journey? At least that is what I get from the later part when she is going home and someone tells her they followed her journey on the radio??

1.5 stars is what I can give. I just wanted more explanation. More what is going on. Better art. Better fonts. There were elements that I liked, but sadly those couldn't make me love this story/this book. Still, happy I got the chance to read it, it was unique.

The artwork is amazing. I loved the idea of a girl who can carry a flood away with her hair. The unexpected friendship with Kael and what good they can do together.

The artwork in this book was gorgeous. I was also touched by the moving story of two “misfits” finding their place in the world.

The story is pretty straightforward, and it was cute. I liked the illustrations and color palette.
Zoc is a young girl with the ability of her hair to attract and drag water. She is trying to find her purpose in life and meets a young boy who has an unusual gift as well which complements Zoc's ability. I read it quickly.

I read this through NetGalley as an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Absolutely delightful read from start to finish. Truly unlike anything I've ever read before and I sincerely hope the author shares more tales and artwork with us as soon as possible!

This is such an inventive plot and character! Reading the story's premise, I was curious, yet hesitant. How would this become a story? The author creates a fantasy world where a girl collecting water with her hair is nothing more surprising than an annoyance, being have powers to burst into flame due to others emotions, or where bird-like creatures travel around as minstrels. As for images, it took a bit of getting used to the unique art styles and choices in coloring, but it fit with the theme and story. I really enjoyed the uniqueness of this story and was curious to see where it would go, which held my interest. Friendship, individuality, and appreciation form a surprisingly moving plot in such a few amount of pages.

An unusual story of an unusual friendship.

Zoc is a young girl with an unusual ability – her hair attracts and drags water. She has no clue what to do with this “talent” and is quite fed up of being the centre of attraction as well as teasing. While wondering about her purpose in life, she receives a call for help from a nearby flooded town. As she drags the water away in a long journey, she meets interesting minstrels and a young boy named Kael, who also has an equally unusual gift, something that is in perfect complement to Zoc’s abilities.

The story is in a way pretty straightforward – a young girl and a young boy struggling to find friendship and their exact role in the world. At the same time, their abilities make them such unusual leads that the story is elevated to a different level altogether.

The illustrations in this bande desinée are coloured quite subtly. Unlike what I had assumed, the colour palette is not dominated by blue to indicate Zoc’s magical talent with water. On the contrary, green is the highlight colour on most of the panels. And this creates a nice contrast with Zoc’s water and Kael’s skill.

All in all, this is a story that is equal parts strange and scintillating. It feels like a Studio Ghibli movie in a French comic form. A nice and quick read for anyone interested in a different kind of graphic novel.

3.75 stars.

My thanks to Jade Khoo and NetGalley for the DRC of “Zoc”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Such a wholesome story about finding your place to fit in in the world! The art was lovely and the setting of the story intrigued me, I wish it was explored more in depth. Ghibli in rural France!

The art was pretty and the story was easy to follow. On digital the font was quite small to read but physically would have been more engaging. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.

The art style and the colors were really cute. The story and the characters are quite simple but at the same time peculiar. I liked Zoc and Kael and the friendship they developed because they complemented each other in a way.

Zoc has a peculiar gift, she can move water with her hair. Most of the time she runs into trouble - flooding sidewalks and getting others wet, but she's trying her best to find a way to make her gift useful to herself and the world around her.

Zoc was a really lovely story about a girl who was trying her best to find her own path in the world. The aspect of her power and the way she controlled water was a heavy burden she had to carry - and though misgiven, Zoc did try her hardest to help. When she cut off her hair for the first time, I felt a pang as I realized she was forcefully trying to remove the part of herself that she felt like annoyed everyone else. I really enjoyed her journey and meeting Kael, a boy who bursts into flames when he has an extreme emotion. They were bookends of each other, and a great way to explain mental health without explicitly mentioning it.

My critiques are few, but the main one is the copy I downloaded was low-quality. It made the text occasionally hard to read - though the text's translation from French was flawless. I also wish Zoc's world had been explained a little more, I was surprised to see the minstrels were animal creatures when everything had led me to believe this was a semi-realistic world.

Overall, I would give this comic four stars! I did enjoy it immensely and really loved the art style and the choices made in the plot by author and artist Jade Khoo. I thought it balanced the story focusing on Zoc well with the backstory given to other characters. I would happily read another graphic novel by Jade Khoo!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Europe Comics for providing me with a copy to review!

This was such a quick and enjoyable read. The art style and the colors are lovely, and the characters were quite blunt but in a refreshing way. I loved how Zoc carries her life with so much honesty, her feelings, interests and intentions are right there. Her journey to finding a way to use her power for goodness felt earned, even though this is a short book, and the way her friendship with Kael developed was so genuine and heartwarming. I really enjoyed that Zoc's interactions with Kael, the minstrels and her family helped complete the puzzle of her personality. I was pleasantly surprised by this story.