Book Thoughts: Loving, Ohio
This post contains affiliate links. See the affiliate disclaimer here. Warning: This post contains discussion of suicide, murder, religious trauma, grief, and cults.
Teenagers in Loving, Ohio are disappearing… and no one knows what’s happening to them. Sloane, Elliott, Cameron, and Ana walk alongside fear and grief as they try to finish high school in one piece, all of them with unbearable knowledge weighing them down. Sloane’s boyfriend, Jesse, recently died by suicide before he was meant to leave on a mission trip for the Chorus, a new-age cult at the center of all things in Loving. Before he died, he gave Sloane a mysterious key, which she’s worn on a necklace ever since.
Written by Matthew Erman and illustrated by Sam Beck, Loving, Ohio is, in a word, haunting. Repetitive imagery, shifting color palettes, and rapid-fire transitions between Sloane’s inner monologue and dialogue between characters build tension as everyone tries to survive the murderer known as the Man in the Afternoon. After Sloane and her friends narrowly escape death at his hands during a concert in a local church basement, they make a pact never to mention they were there. Then, they attempt to track him down to prevent further tragedy, ignoring the danger and focusing solely on the goal of getting him off the streets of Loving before someone else gets hurt.
The bigger problem is the creeping indoctrination of everyone in Loving into the Chorus, which operates on the core tenet that the body is a prison and opening the third eye is necessary for ascension to the final afterlife. The cult believes in reincarnation insofar as people keep being reborn until they can free themselves of their physical prisons. Although the events in Loving, Ohio are fictional, Erman writes both about the cult and from its texts so convincingly it feels real. If you know anything about Jonestown, for example, Loving, Ohio reads like a familiar story—but there’s catharsis here that is often missing from real-life cult news.
Having read Erman’s previous work, including the weird but lovely Bonding (which I named one of the best comics of 2023), this is hands down one of the best scripts (if not the best) he’s ever written. Beck’s art is equally top-tier, and her tendency toward fantasy works beautifully in this surreal, horrific exploration of a midwestern town with a devastating secret. Together, this team has crafted an otherworldly comic that sticks to your bones like molasses: thick, dark, heavy. It’s a showcase of both creators at their absolute best.
At times, flipping the page feels like facing a dreadful monster, something under the bed that wants to eat you alive. Other times, dragging your eyes from one panel to the next feels like throwing a shock of cold water over your head to make sure you aren’t dreaming, that this isn’t a nightmare come to life on the page before you. The haunting trill of the Chorus creeps into every frame, especially as Sloane and her friends get closer to finding the Man in the Afternoon. Colors shift, darken, blend, bleed. Erman’s dialogue gets shorter, sharper, and farther apart, leaving major gaps where characters fail to communicate their fears, their desires, their dreams.
To put it simply, Loving, Ohio grabs you by the shirt and pulls you in, then refuses to let go even after you’ve closed the back cover. This comic is beautiful by every definition of the word. It’s a story about grief first and foremost—grief for a dead friend, for missing and murdered peers, for a life the midwest refuses to let its youth have without ripping themselves apart as they pry it from Ohio’s sharp, bloody teeth.
It’s also a story about survival and the horror that entails, about making choices that make more enemies than friends to protect your soul and the souls of the people you love most, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t because you ultimately can’t make anyone else’s decisions but your own. It’s a story about leaving. A story about trauma bonding. A story about escape—from a cult, from a small town, from notoriety, from memories that won’t stop haunting you.
If you’re looking for something truly phenomenal to add to your shelf this summer, I cannot recommend Loving, Ohio enough.
Loving, Ohio will be available everywhere books are sold on August 6.
Loving, Ohio
"We all lived here. In some way. And wherever you live it leaves imprints on you"
After the mysterious suicide of their friend, Sloane, Elliott, Cameron, and Ana are just trying to get through the rest of high school. They live in Loving, Ohio—a town built around The Chorus, a new-age cult with members firmly planted in positions of power and influence throughout the community.
Through their grief, a series of murders throws these friends into a mystery connected to everything around them. Sloane and her friends have to escape a roaming murderer, figure out their place in the world, and deal with loss all in the looming shadow of The Chorus. But through it, they will find the true cost of friendship and the adulthood they seek.
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