YMMV / Smile (Raina Telgemeier)

• Adorkable: Raina. She's shy, insecure, fairly nice and a bit geeky.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: The prevailing view of girl-centered graphic novel for years has been that boys won't read them and thus they are unprofitable. The book and its sequels have received critical acclaim and sold millions of copies. And they're really good, as you can tell by the general tone on these pages despite occasional mocking of stupid decisions Raina (the character) makes.
• Awesome Art: The book and its sequels have gorgeous colors, appealing character designs and a sublime understanding of atmosphere and humor. Splash pages in general are very pretty to look at.
  • More than one commentator has praised how Raina depicts her young self's development in subtle but clever ways (curlier hair, disappearance of acne, upright posture) that are more complex than simply drawing breasts on "post-8th Grade Raina").
• Catharsis Factor: When Raina breaks up with her old friends after they pants her in the courtyard.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Amara. Adult Raina even said she was surprised how popular her depiction of her little sister turned out to be.
  • Sue, Raina's mother, is also fairly well-liked on Goodreads. Raina has described her as her favorite character for being there for her always.
• Harsher in Hindsight: We learn in Guts that Nicole's father is an alcoholic who yells at her and her brother.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Raina zigzags between this and a more traditional Woobie; she has some pretty selfish or insensitive ^note primarily standing Sam up at the dance. moments but she gets dumped on by her "friends" and screws herself over enough that the audience has to root for her.
  • Nicole, once you read Guts (Raina Telgemeier). While we don't know just how she has it - but if Raina is anything to go by, Nicole became a follower. Karin and the friend group is probably the only one who's nice to her!
• Out of the Ghetto: Plenty of boys have admitted to reading the book and its sequels, and Raina Telgemeier has sold more than 15 million books as of October 2018.
• Squick:
  • How Raina had her mouth basically reconstructed (ie, having her front teeth knocked out (and one of them being shoved up into her gum), having them put back in only for them to fuse into her jawbone, having to get them taken out again and having the rest of her teeth rearranged with braces to take their place). Not all of it is shown, but some bits are, like the initial accident which shows Raina bleeding from the mouth as she scrambles to get her teeth.
  • The section with the periodontist, who's shown doing a vicious scaling procedure on her damaged gums which is so traumatic Raina passes out in the hallway.