In her latest graphic novel, Lee Lai—an award-winning transgender cartoonist born in Melbourne and based in Québec—tells a powerful, poignant story of friendship between two second-generation Asian queer girls. Against the backdrop of a scorching Montreal summer, amid a cast of unlikely, fleeting partners, the friendship between Cannon and Trish is tested by their growing awareness of impending adulthood.

It’s a tale at once unsettling and delicate, funny and heartbreaking, whose themes will remind many readers of the finest work of Ocean Vuong.