Funny view on relationships

Do you know those sugar candies in the form of a heart?
Well, they're the main characters in this comic book's art

On their front you can read what they think, but do not say
Even if théy don't feel good, they'll surely brighten up your day!

Sweet or not?

For those who don't know this kind of candy: apparently they're called 'sweethearts' and this heart-shaped pastel coloured candy is sold around Valentine's Day. Every heart has a text printed on it, like 'Be mine', 'Kiss me', 'Miss You', … (if you want to know more about it, click here).

Although the candy hearts in Tommy Siegel's book look sweet, they're anything but.
Because instead of mellow love messages, you can read what these little characters really think of each other.
Dating, married, straight, gay, … a whole range of possible relationships is adressed in 114 pages of single-panel cartoons.
As the sharp humorous observations are often recognizable, there's certainly something to everyone's taste.

The start of a new career

Tommy Siegel's comics began as doodles in the back of a van as a touring rock musician of the band Jukebox the Ghost.
He set himself the challenge of drawing a comic every day for 500 days.
This project garnered him more than 300.000 followers on social media with shout-outs from cultural heavyweights ranging from Ringo Starr to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
At the end of this project he bundled several of his comics and in September 2020 his debut book collection I Hope This Helps was published. This illustrated guide to the absurdities of our phone-obsessed modern life includes 200+ pages of comics, essays, extremely helpful guides to coping with 21st-century panic and tales from surviving 500 days of comics.

Apparently he'd got the taste of comic drawing, because when he was quarantined with his parents in Richmond (Virginia) in the early stages of the pandemic, he made a lot of Candy Hearts-cartoons.
And another period of living in a quarantaine pod in the woods with several close friends in Maine delivered also a lot of inspiration.
Although these strange corona-periods affected (and still affect) everyone's life, in Siegel's case they appeared to be very fruitful and even resulted in his next book Candy Hearts, which will be released on 2 February 2021.

If you want to know more about Tommy Siegel, you can head over to his website.
At the bottom you'll find links to his social media-accounts on Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook where you can discover lots of his drawings and get a good idea of his sense of humour.

*Thanks to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.