Yeah yeah, it’s not chapter books. Again. Welcome to a new article type: Carte Blanche! As the name suggests, this’ll let me talk about non-chapter book things when the muse strikes. Mostly actual French titles, also like the name suggests. These won’t be very frequent, so don’t worry. Chapter books are still the primary focus of this blog.

Today, I’ll be talking about Marie-Lune, a ten book graphic novel series by the author of Sorceline. Unlike Sorceline, Marie-Lune has never been localized in English. Whole thing is in French. I read it using my phone’s translation app, one year of high school French, a few weeks of Duolingo, and my Linguistics degree. Machine translation is pretty good these days, so I’m pretty sure I got 99% of what was going on. Perhaps I missed a nuance or two. It’s fine.

Premise

Marie-Lune follows the life of a fifteen year old teenage fashion shopaholic (and all the drama that comes with that). Book 1’s title is literally I Shop, Therefore I Am. On page one, she relates shopping to Olympic events. Yeah. I’m in.

Longtime readers of this blog can probably guess why I gravitated towards this series. I had to know how a character like this could carry a series for ten books. Or even be a valid main character. She’s basically a mean girl, right? She’s mean, preppy, rich, snooty. You can’t have a mean girl main character. No way.

Oh, but you can.

Characters

As you might expect from a teenage drama series, there’s a decent amount of characters. I won’t cover everyone, but I’ll try to cover most of them. Pretty much everyone is important.

Also as expected from a teenage drama series, there’s a decent amount of twists. I’ll try not to spoil everything when I talk about characters, because that’s at least a third of the draw (the other thirds being Yllya’s art and Douyé’s characters). Pretty much every book starts and ends with drama.

It’s very hard to get pictures of everyone without taking pictures from the actual books and cropping them, so forgive the variety of pics incoming.

Marie-Lune
The aforementioned shopaholic and the series’ namesake. She’s rich, she’s fashionable, she’s got friends. She’s got it all. And most importantly: she’s super endearing despite all of this. I know, crazy.

She genuinely loves her family even if she spends her dad’s money all the time. Her obsession with shopping stems from her mom supposedly leaving them at a young age to live her life in New York. She just wanted to get closer to her mom via the thing she left them for. Through all her teenage drama, she learns to live a normal life, and even gets a job. She has quite the character growth for a series that probably could have justified none.

Anne-So
Marie-Lune’s best friend. The “So” is short for Sophie. Because of course it is. This blog is like a Sophie magnet at this point. Not my favorite character (she comes later) but Anne-So comes very close. She shares in Marie-Lune’s shopping and being rich habits and is a good friend despite all the shallowness. Also she says “Oh my God!” a lot. It’s basically her catchphrase. I was going to put an image together of every panel she says it, but it would have taken forever. Maybe another time.

Marie-Lune’s Parents
They’re both not great people, but they have their reasons. Despite those reasons, they’re still pretty good people. Paradox? Maybe. Realistic? Absolutely.

Poochie and Églantine
They publish a gossip paper at school. Nobody is safe from their gossip, so keep your drama to yourself. They’re also Marie-Lune’s friends, but don’t show up too too much. Usually a few times a book. They’re pretty fun when they’re on page. Kind of wish they showed up more.

The Boys (Mathieu, Ulysse, and Jean-Pierre)
I’m just going to talk about all of Marie-Lune’s love interests in one section. They’re different characters. They’re not just token hot guys. They have personalities. But we’d be here all day if I gave them separate sections.
Mathieu is Marie-Lune’s main love interest for most of the series. He’s the only guy who seems to care about Marie-Lune as a person.
Ulysse is a terrible person, and I’ll leave the series to you to find out why.
Jean-Pierre was Marie-Lune’s first love interest. He works as a tailor, and is very good at it. He gets with Anne-So later, and they’re pretty great together.

Jean-Dominique-Louis
The other other other boy. He’s Églantine’s love interest, not Marie-Lune’s. JDL for short is your stereotypical pimple-faced nerd. But also he’s an actual prince and has tons of money, because that’s the kind of series this is. He ends up helping Marie-Lune with a problem early on and remains a general bro for the rest of the series. I really like how he’s portrayed. He’s not written off as a stereotype (though it is played up). He’s actually really cool and gets the girl despite his looks (and his title).

Pénélope
I can’t really talk about her without spoiling a bunch of stuff, but don’t let this picture from the artist’s social media fool you. She’s a jerk. A big jerk. And the main character of this series is already kind of a mean girl, so you can tell how much of a jerk Pénélope must be by comparison.

Emma
She only starts showing up in book 7 for reasons, but quickly becomes one of Marie-Lune’s new friends. She’s not even really that important, but her design and demeanor really make her stand out from the rest of the cast. I don’t see goth characters in kidlit that much. Or at all, really. Maybe I should start reading Monster High.

Also Emma has a pet mouse on her head in every single panel she’s in. And the mouse regularly changes poses to reflect the mood that Emma is in. Nuts attention to detail. This might be why she’s not in the story more. I think if she was in the series more, she might be my favorite character.

Ka
We’re finally at the end of the character section, so we can finally get to the best character: Marie-Lune’s sister. She’s the “responsible older sister” type and complete opposite of Marie-Lune. Her fashion sense is terrible (she only has one brown outfit for basically the entire series). She only uses her father’s money to donate to various charities and wildlife funds. She was born to make Marie-Lune’s life miserable (according to Marie-Lune).

I just like this character archetype a lot. Which is saying something in a series full of mean girls. I think Ka really grounds everything and shows you how ridiculous all of the other characters are by comparison. Ka is a pretty normal person, all things considered.

Series Breakdown

(1) I shop, therefore I am. – Marie-Lune goes about her life, trying not to let on the real reason why she’s rich.
(2) Help, I lost my best friend! – Anne-So finds out why Marie-Lune is rich, and is really mad about how she had to find out.
(3) I’m so in love with him! – Marie-Lune meets Mathieu.
(4) It’s official… I hate her! – Marie-Lune meets Mathieu’s girlfriend, Pénélope.
(5) Help! My head is upside-down! – Marie-Lune’s dad goes missing, and she gets hospitalized with amnesia.
(6) Don’t let me down! – Marie-Lune loses all of her money and has to live like a slightly more normal person.
(7) My new life. – Marie-Lune upends her entire life over a boy.
(8) Life is ugly! – Marie-Lune gets anxiety over how well her life is going.
(9) I’m (almost) swimming in happiness! – Marie-Lune’s parents have a kid, and Marie-Lune gets back together with Mathieu.
(10) Back to basics. – Marie-Lune gets a job working for Anne-So’s family.

Cool Stuff

Marie-Lune has an in-character blog (and Facebook page and fan forum).
I’m not kidding. This is real. Her blog ran from 2008 to 2011 and is still live today. She comments on her dress in fan arts. She also talks about book releases from books one through four. Previews and such. The back cover of every book was also chosen from a small fan poll from this very blog.
After this they transitioned to the Facebook page, which is not live anymore. Tragic.
The fan forum also appears to be inactive. But at least you can still visit it.

Marie-Lune and Anne-So call people watching a fashion show.
Because they comment on everyone’s clothes that walks by. I wish they did this more often. It only happens a few times in a few books.

At one point, Pénélope plays Am Stram Gram to decide which boy she wants to date.
It’s a choosing song. French Eeny-Meenie-Miney-Mo, basically. It says so much about her character without saying anything. She’s so shallow. It’s great.

Every book the artist draws Marie-Lune in twenty-four new outfits for the end pages.

Like this. This had me reading every next book. I had to see the new outfits. Some of them are even references to anime and video games.

Conclusion

Marie-Lune also has a five book novelization. At a glance, it looks like they’re just novel versions of the graphic novel story, but maybe I’ll cover that another time.

Is the series over? Maybe? There hasn’t been a new release since 2019 and book ten is called “Back to Basics”. It might be safe to call it over. But there hasn’t been a book collection yet~

Should you read it? Only if what I said above sounds really up your alley. Or if you live in France. It’s fairly expensive to import the physical books, and I can’t seem to find digital versions of all of them either. Did I mention they’re only in French, too? Lot of work to give this a once over.

Next month we’ll be back to the usual chapter book basics. It’s gonna take me a bit to finish the next French series.

C’est la vie.