I went in expecting a comic that would skim across the surface of what romance looks like in the modern era. I thought it might, perhaps, dip a languid toe into the deeper waters of feelings or the human desire for connection but figured it would mostly narrate a funny string of bad Tinder dates.

Silly me! This isn’t a shallow romp at all. M.S. Harkness tricked me into reading a story about intense loneliness and her unresolved family trauma.

To be clear, there are still plenty of terrible (and terrific) hookups in this book. It is explicit as hell and one page in particular provides a very detailed depiction of what Harkness describes as “athletic, tantric sex.”

But where the first half of the story is a mostly lighthearted reflection on the perils of dating apps and their user base of terrible-yet-generic men — who are portrayed as literal fish in the sea — the second half is more ambitious and somber. Harkness, who is alone on Christmas Eve and in denial about how this makes her feel, gets roped into a titanically unsatisfying hookup with a fussy hottie (her words) who decides, for some reason, to ask about her family. This prompts a flashback — one of the most formally interesting sequences in the book — that reveals Harkness is estranged from a father who, to put it mildly, is extremely cruel.

It is a grim narrative turn, and to be honest it caught me by surprise. It wasn’t a wholly unpleasant surprise: I respect that Harkness tried to explore the complexity of her emotions and moved beyond a somewhat simplistic narrative of “look how bad dating apps are lol.” But I did find myself wishing her family history wasn’t dropped in quite so suddenly near the end.

Not a perfect or revolutionary comic, but one that at least makes me want to read more of M.S. Harkness in future.

You can get a copy of Tinderella here.