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Book Summary and Reviews of Buff Soul by Moa Romanova

Buff Soul by Moa Romanova

Buff Soul

by Moa Romanova

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Aug 2025, 240 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Eisner Award winner Moa Romanova returns with an autobiographical graphic novel about accompanying her rock star bestie on a U.S. tour, fueled only by alcohol, drugs and sex.

How do you prevent history from repeating itself, and is it possible to protect the one you love from themselves? When cartoonist Moa Romanova joins her rock star bestie on a U.S. tour, life quickly turns chaotic, as adolescent trauma begins to haunt her.

Buff Soul tackles addiction, friendship, and loss in a rollicking road trip adventure involving selling speed, breaking bones, massive hangovers, drug withdrawal, having your entire fist inside your best friend, and shooting guns in the desert. What begins as an insanely comical, hedonistic road trip in the spirit of Pineapple Express, takes a dark turn when her best friend disappears. This event triggers memories of an adolescent trauma she had yet to reckon with, leading Romanova to confront the reality of how far she's let her self-destruction go.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Eisner winner Romanova follows Goblin Girl with another exceptional autofiction...Amid her candid reckoning with addiction and anxiety, Romanova is also bracingly witty, with nimble banter and blunt punch lines delineating the highs and lows of her central characters' fierce friendship." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A thoughtful story about the dangers of addiction ends with a hopeful possibility of reinvention." —Kirkus Reviews

This information about Buff Soul was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Moa Romanova

Moa Romanova is a Swedish painter and cartoonist living in Stockholm. Her debut graphic novel, Goblin Girl, garnered the prestigious Eisner Award in 2021 for Best U.S. Edition of International Material, as well as a National Book Critics Circle Award and John Leonard Prize nomination. She has collaborated with brands like Adidas, Vivienne Westwood and VOLT.

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