Trigger warnings for readers: sex, drugs, self-harm, eating disorders.
At the age of thirteen, Sofia is kidnapped.
At least, that’s how she remembers it, as she was dragged from her bed, ordered to dress in boring clothes that did not include her usual combat boots and fishnet tights, and she was definitely not allowed to take her essential black eyeliner with her.
In reality, her mother had reached capacity and sent her away from home to stay at New Horizons, a behavioural improvement camp for troubled teens, where she would hopefully learn some self-discipline, personal-safety, and respect, all while surviving in the wilderness.
Presented in graphic format, we follow Sofia’s memories of her time spent at four different residential programmes and how they re-shaped her teenage years. Accompanied with a mix of her old journal entries, and photographs of her younger self, we are pulled inside Sofia’s tornado of childhood emotions as she spirals precariously toward the label of being a ‘bad kid.’
Sofia recalls her life before camp.
She can’t believe her mum has remarried and left her all alone in the bedroom down the hallway. Two years ago they were sleeping like besties in the same bed, but now Don has arrived and ruined everything. Now she is stuck in here sleeping alone, while Mum and Don have their own room, and there are too many walls rising up between them.
She misses her mum and the life they had together, even though it wasn’t perfect.
Her only solace is her soul-sister Marigold, the coolest girl she ever met, who totally supports her choices in bunking off school and smoking up a storm. But when her mum finds her secret journal and discovers everything else she has been experimenting with, Sofia is suddenly torn away from her friends and flung into a bunk at New Horizons, where they make her walk in the woods for hours and talk about her feelings. Life is so not fair!
What Sofia thinks will be just a few days away from home, turns into months and then years of rehabilitation. With every interaction being monitored, the crescendo of walls between her and her mum keep building and she realises the only way to break through is to start trusting herself.
But can she get it together long enough to truly break free, and can she really trust the people who are supposed to be helping her find her way?
Sofia Szamosi’s graphic memoir follows her own personal journey through the unregulated institution of wilderness rehabilitation programmes in the US, that both cut off her freedoms and denied her contact with her own family, all while she fought to remove her categorisation as a ‘bad kid.’
Szamosi is an artist based in New York City, where she creates art while spending time with her young family and an elderly Pomeranian named Breakfast.
BAD KID: My Life as a “Troubled Teen” draws you into the spiral of intoxication, childhood trauma, and the seemingly endless struggle to find your footing when your world is falling apart.
This gorgeous YA passage through a tormented teen’s mind was published 26th March, 2026!
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