Dolly is a lonely 18-year-old high school senior. She’s become adrift since she had to drop out of gymnastics due to her parents getting a divorce, making the money situation tight. One day after school, three classmates – acquaintances, really – pick her up and take her to IHOP. They chat for a while, and then an ulterior motive shows up.
Buy HeavenThere is a mysterious place called Heaven located well outside of town, in the middle of nowhere. It is a strip club with a weird reputation. Half the online reviews claim it is an amazing joint, but the other half seem to indicate that it doesn’t even exist. All the friends are underage and thus not allowed in, but Dolly is 18. She could check it out for them.
They drive out to where it is supposed to be, and lo and behold, it is there, and it is glorious – it has giant high-heeled legs sticking out of the top of it. Dolly walks up and knocks on the door. A woman bathed in shadows answers and immediately asks to see an ID. Then she asks if Dolly is there to audition, claiming that she has great posture. But when Dolly smiles, revealing her braces, the door slams shut.
But now Dolly is intrigued. She rips her braces off herself and goes back. She meets the owner, Lover, who offers her a job without even an audition. But she’s not a dancer; she becomes Lover’s assistant. Turns out Dolly loves the place. It becomes a place where she belongs. She gets lost in the work. She starts missing school. Her newfound friends start to worry.
They have every right to because Heaven is not exactly what it seems. To say more would be to spoil it. There isn’t that much more to it, to be honest. With just under 100 pages filled with some relatively large panels, this is a pretty short book. But it is a good one. And fun.
I love how indie comics, so much more than ones put out by major publishers, can get weird and do the unexpected. I never knew where Heaven was headed, but I always enjoyed the ride. Katie Skelly’s story is simply told, but she gets a lot of information and emotion across with few words. Likewise, her art is fairly simply drawn, and yet it gets across Dolly’s full sense of loneliness and need to belong.
I enjoyed this book a lot. I’ve now read it twice, and I’ll for sure be picking up some of Katie Skelly’s other books.
