Cross My Heart and Never Lie

by

Nora Dåsnes

Illustrated by

Nora Dåsnes

Characters designed by

Nora Dåsnes

Rating:
Genre: , ,

Trigger Warnings:

Queer Rep:

Disability Rep:


In this fresh, sensitive, diary-style graphic novel, 12-year-old Tuva’s questions about becoming a teenager are confusing—so when her first crush turns out to be on another girl, it feels absolutely wonderful–so why does it become so complicated?

Perfect for fans of The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag, HeartStopper by Alice Oseman, and Jen Wang’s The Dressmaker and the Prince.

Tuva is starting seventh grade, and her checklist of goals writing out a diary, getting a trendy look, building the best fort in the woods with her BFFs, and much more. But when she starts school, nothing is how she hoped it would be.

Seventh grade has split her friends into rival TEAM LINNEA and the girls who fall in love and TEAM BAO and the girls who NEVER fall in love. Linnea has a BOYFRIEND, Bao hates everything related to love. Worst of all, Linnea and Bao expect Tuva to choose a side!

In this delighfully hand-lettered coming-of-age graphic diary, Tuva gets caught between feeling like a kid and wanting to know HOW to become a teenager. Then Miriam shows up and suddenly Tuva feels as if she’s met her soulmate. Can you fall in love with a girl, keep it from your friends, and survive? For Tuva, it may be possible, but it’s defintely not easy.

This was a real cute book and I’m thinking about getting it for my friend’s kid because it’s within that age range. It’s a cute coming-of-age that deals with how friends drift apart when love and relationships come into play.

Welcome to the Menagerie.

Here is where M logs their media activity. Partly because Goodreads is forgettable and keeping physical logs is harder. Sometimes M writes a lot. Sometimes M doesn’t write enough. It doesn’t matter. This is just a for-fun little blog so that M can remember what they thought about whatever they watched or read or played or. Whatever.


What is M?

I read. Voraciously. I have subscriptions to those book things on digital retailers. I consume books at nearly all hours. The hours I don’t spend reading? I’m writing. I’m drawing. I have a problem. I have a problem in that I love to read things that are in the same vein repeatedly. Book journals don’t work and as much as I text my friends screenshots of book passages, it doesn’t scratch the itch. Now I’m going to be doing… tiny… tiny book reports.


Truck-Kun Kill Count:


Books & Light Novels Read in 2025: 19/50
38%
Comics Read in 2026: 39/200
19%
Physical Owned Books Read: 477/830
58%


Menagerie Categories


Tagged in the Menagerie

Absolute Asshole NPC (86) A Fetish For Suffering (45) Can't Say No (67) Chekov's Gun (42) Childhood Friends (50) Curiosity Fucks You Up (76) Cursed (58) Damsel in Distress (57) Damsel in Distress (subverted) (85) Dangerous Reputation (85) Doting Husband (64) Double Identity (41) Everyone Loves MC (87) Evil Eyes & Big Heart (49) Fan Service (92) Grumpy x Sunshine (52) Hypercompetent MC (72) If You Love Them, Set Them Free (49) I Know a Guy (46) Last Minute Hero (97) Loss of Humanity (50) Main Character Coloring (69) MC's Skewed Metrics (71) Mean Boy (118) Mean Boy Love Interest (47) Modern Morals (45) Nat 20s (89) Not Actually Dead (74) Nuclear Revenge (68) OP Protag (91) Petty Revenge (44) Power of Friendship (73) Power of Love (68) Self-Sacrifice (67) Shock Value (44) Sympathetic Evil (63) The Moral is Community (60) Tragic Backstory (76) Twist! (55) Uniquely Skilled (87) Unreliable Narrator (53) Weird and Wacky On Purpose (74) Western-Style Fantasy (83) Wrong Place Wrong Time (64) Zero to Hero (77)


Slime Pen