California-based author and illustrator Yumi Sakugawa’s I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You is an adorably heartfelt graphic novel exploring the depth of platonic love.

It’s a very quick read that features largely monochromatic comic-like illustrations. Sakugawa’s art style gives the book a handmade element that makes the story feel more personal.

As a consciously sentimental person, this book really stood out to me. I loved that it focused on the significance of platonic relationships, especially while most other media uses friendships to demonstrate the possibility for romantic love.

Selfishly, this book reminded me of my best friends.

Though we have all known each other separately for years, the group —or LT as we like to call—it, formed just last year while we were all working on the Leadership Team at Pearce Williams Summer Camp in Iona, Ontario.

I had gone to this camp since the ripe age of nine. My parents were freshly divorced, and I was in desperate need of a place that I felt accepted. Thankfully, Pearce Williams was just the place.

Over the years, it would become my second home. All of my major connections being rooted back to that property, all of my best memories taking place around those campfires.

I can’t remember exactly when I met Isabelle Tyson-Paradis—we went to elementary school together and I was closer in age to both of her brothers—but I can’t think of a time where I didn’t know her. I do, however, know that she has always loved talking, and though I may regret saying this, I’m a pretty big fan of what she has to say (most of the time).

I met Kayla Richards on the first day of my second year at camp. It’s safe to say that her ability to be shamelessly herself has not changed a bit since that August afternoon. I couldn’t go a day without talking about her or her family even if my life depended on it, and I think I’m better off that way.

Ila Manderson was a staple of the 2019 Summer Staff team, which was my first summer working at camp as a Counsellor In Training, carrying the inclusion program on her back. Though we didn’t really connect individually at the time, I always looked up to her and her positivity, and am so honoured that we have so many similarities because if I am anything like Ila, that’s a win to me.

The first time I ever talked to Holly Wilson was over the phone after she got the position of the Counsellor-In-Training Coordinator in 2022. It was her first summer at camp, and having been a CIT a few years prior, I gave her a bit of a rundown (which was surely inferior to the advice of Amy Timmermans, another close friend of mine). I didn’t know it then, but Holly would go on to be someone that I would always count on to understand me–despite the fact that I will never be able to understand some of her infamous hot takes.

During a week volunteering at camp in the summer of 2022, I was a Leadership counsellor alongside Hailey Pineau. We connected within seconds, to an almost impossible degree. That night our campers asked us how long we had been friends for, and after telling them that we had met just a few hours before, they were stunned. Together, Hailey and I have come up with some of the most influential comedy bits of our modern world (or at least we think so).

We all spent our first two months together planning a summer camp, and picking up thousands of sticks. The formation of our group was fuelled with dorm slumber parties, canoe trips, matching beds with quadruple mattresses, porch dance parties, Cammy lunches, and countless trips to Shaw’s Ice Cream for milkshakes (made with strawberry ice cream and extra strawberry sauce, of course).

By the end of the summer, we had spent four months straight together; our weekends filled with group trips to the beach, Taylor Swift release parties, and Barbie screenings.

Over New Years, we spent a few days at “LT Lakehouse”, the third building that we have taken over so far, preceded by the infamous LT House and LT Trailer.

Though it was just a short time with all of us in one place, they were truly some of the best days of my life—even if I was coaxed into doing the polar plunge into Lake Erie for the second year in a row and criticized for my karaoke skills.

In our gift exchange, Ila got us custom engraved chain friendship bracelets, all matching the colour of jewellery that we usually wear. Camp counselors are known for making string bracelets, but these chain ones are a bit more permanent, in the same way that our connection is.

Despite our distance throughout the school year, not a day goes by that we don’t talk, or at least send a few stupid videos back and forth. This idea of these small expressions of care is a large theme in the graphic novel, as these digital interactions are often seen as insignificant.

In my personal experience, seeing notifications that a friend has shared a post with me can never be appreciated enough. It shows that they know me well enough to recognize something I’d enjoy or find funny, and that they thought of me–even if just for the few seconds it took to forward an Instagram post. 

Though we all have very different dynamics with each other on an individual basis, we all share the mutual understanding of the importance of our friendship, and this similarity can be summed up by one of my favourite lines from Sakugawa’s book: “Because what you find to be beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking in this world is what I find to be beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking in this world.”

The quote “And when we do hang out, I don’t want to swap saliva, I just want to swap favourite books” references this same sense of genuine thought and care involved in an exchange of media, while also discussing the lack of ulterior motives of romance within the friendship that appears as an ongoing theme throughout the book.

I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You provides a perfect depiction of the pure, genuine love that comes with platonic relationships—a love so strong that it’s almost tangible, and a love that I am so lucky to be able to experience in my own friendships with LT.

From a societal standpoint, friendships are often seen as inferior to romantic relationships, but in reality, platonic connections should be prioritized in the same way–as shown by Sakugawa in this beautiful comic.

In the spring, Hailey, Kayla, and I went on a trip to Fort Erie to stay with Kayla’s grandparents for the weekend. We spent one of our nights out for a nice dinner, which was a nice change from our usual camp uniform of Gildan t-shirts and athletic shorts. The waitress came to our table and asked if we were here celebrating anything, to which Hailey and I replied that we weren’t. Fully out of left field, Kayla said “we’re celebrating friendship”.

It took every bone in both mine and Hailey’s bodies to not burst out laughing at her, because it was such a stupid and unexpected response that came out of her mouth so quickly.

Though we still love to make fun of her for that unpredictable comment at a nice restaurant, I agree with her. The shared friendship within LT is something worth celebrating, as platonic love often goes unappreciated.

Both the book and this article serve as love letters to LT, my best friends in the entire world.

Yumi Sakugawa wrote “After all, we only have so much time in this world to only have so many friends” and I would truly choose them every single time.

Dedicated to: Ila “Hiccup” Manderson, Hailey “Fezzik” Pineau, Kayla Joe “Roo” Richards, Isabelle “Zukes” Tyson-Paradis, & Holly “Bacon” Wilson