“Put it in.” I slid it into my roommate’s VCR.” “Mel twisted over me and reached for her backpack. Additionally, while the story didn’t feel overly or unnecessarily time-stamped, small inaccuracies jarred – There are flashes of terrific writing – Sharon’s family are brilliantly rendered, her mother in particular – but too often those flashes were lost in dialogue that felt forced emotions that were too jagged and descriptions of animation that only hard-core fans would be interested in. Although Whitaker saves most of Sharon and Mel’s back-story for later in the novel, you don’t doubt their motivations. Sharon is the work-horse – talented yet unsure, with a list of insecurities that play out in her relationships with men. Mel is raucous, talented, unapologetic and an addict. Firstly, the characters were well-developed – their personality traits and small clues about their past give the reader enough information to draw some (accurate) conclusions. There were a number of things I really liked in this book and a few that I intensely disliked. Maybe I should just be honest and tell everyone that me cleaning up from the night before has become our truest form of collaboration.”

Their first feature film, based on Mel’s dysfunctional childhood, is a hit but in the middle of celebrating their success, tragedy strikes, testing their working relationship and friendship. Ten years later, they are still working together, as animators. Both outsiders, the women become friends, bonding over their mutual love of underground cartoons. By all indications, it was exactly my kind of book – a contemporary story about two women, Sharon and Mel, who meet in a university art class. I was thrilled to spot Kayla Rae Whitaker’s debut, The Animators.

The animators by kayla rae whitaker