Having only just finished volume one, I moved directly into volume two while Nick and Charlie’s tentative friendship, and that final, complicated kiss, were still fresh in my mind. This was undoubtedly the right way to read it. The second volume doesn't feel like the beginning of a new story so much as the immediate continuation of a conversation interrupted at its most vulnerable moment.
Volume One ended with Nick and Charlie kissing at Harry’s party before Nick became overwhelmed and ran away. Charlie was left convinced that he'd misunderstood everything and potentially destroyed their friendship. Volume Two opens in the emotional aftermath of that moment, with both boys lying awake in separate bedrooms and imagining the worst.
It's an effective beginning because neither has stopped caring about the other. Their distress comes from confusion rather than rejection, because Charlie believes he's pushed too far, while Nick's frightened by feelings he doesn't understand yet.
When Nick arrives at Charlie’s house in the pouring rain the following morning, soaked through and desperate to apologise, the misunderstanding is resolved with the warmth and gentleness that have become the defining qualities of the series.
From there, we follow Nick as he begins to understand his sexuality and the two boys tentatively become more than friends. Their relationship remains secret while Nick works out what being attracted to Charlie means for the identity he's always assumed was settled.
The result is a tender and highly accessible story about first love, bisexual self-discovery and the difficult distance between recognising who you are privately and being ready to share that truth with other people.
Written and illustrated by Alice Oseman, Heartstopper: Volume Two was originally published in 2019 and continues the story of Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson, two students at the same British boys’ school.
Charlie is openly gay and has already endured sustained bullying after being outed without his consent. Nick is a popular rugby player who's always assumed that he's straight. Their unexpected friendship became increasingly affectionate throughout Volume One, although neither boy initially knew how to name what was developing between them.
Volume Two shifts the emotional focus towards Nick. Charlie might have been the character through whom we first experienced the relationship, but this instalment belongs largely to Nick and his gradual recognition that his feelings for Charlie are romantic.
He begins researching sexuality privately and eventually identifies himself as bisexual. Importantly, Oseman allows this process to be uncertain. Nick isn't suddenly handed a perfectly formed understanding of himself. He searches online, watches videos, questions his assumptions and tries to separate what he genuinely feels from what the people around him expect him to be.
At the same time, Nick and Charlie begin navigating their first relationship through private kisses, nervous text messages, a birthday celebration and a day at the beach. Their happiness is genuine, but so is the pressure created by secrecy. Nick wants to be with Charlie but remains terrified of being seen, especially by the rugby players with whom he's spent much of his school life.
That tension eventually forces Nick to consider not only the kind of person he's attracted to but also the kind of person he wants to become.
The greatest strength of volume two is the care with which it presents Nick’s bisexual self-discovery.
Bisexuality isn't treated as indecision, experimentation or a convenient transition between heterosexuality and homosexuality. Nick realises that his previous attraction to girls was real and that his feelings for Charlie are equally real. His identity expands rather than having his past rewritten for him.
This is important because Nick has difficulty understanding himself because the people around him assume that sexuality has to fit neatly into one of two categories. He initially shares that limited understanding, not because he actively dislikes LGBTQIA+ people but because he's spent years surrounded by boys who treat heterosexuality as the unquestioned default.
Oseman captures how those assumptions can become internalised. Nick's affectionate and confident when he and Charlie are alone, but he instinctively pulls away whenever someone could see them. He knows that loving Charlie doesn't feel wrong, but he's still afraid of what other people will decide what that love says about him.
His fear never becomes an excuse for cruelty. He's consistently honest with Charlie about his confusion, repeatedly apologises for the secrecy and becomes increasingly conscious of the emotional burden Charlie is carrying for him. There's an important difference between Nick asking for time and Ben demanding secrecy in the first book because Nick cares about what the arrangement might be doing to Charlie.
Charlie, in response, gives Nick room to understand himself without forcing him to choose a label or announce their relationship before he's ready. He reassures Nick that self-discovery doesn't have to happen according to a fixed schedule and that uncertainty isn't a failure.
Their gentleness with each other is central to the appeal of the series. They communicate. They ask permission. They apologise when they think they have caused harm, and their relationship offers an alternative to the emotional manipulation and imbalance Charlie previously experienced with Ben.
The graphic format is especially well suited to these gentler moments. Oseman frequently allows expressions, gestures and physical proximity to carry the emotional meaning of a scene. A nervous glance, a tentative hand movement or a blush spreading across a character’s face often says more than the accompanying dialogue.
The handwritten lettering and small illustrated flourishes, like the floating leaves, exclamation marks and other visual expressions of emotion, give the pages an immediate, intimate quality. The artwork is simple, but the characters are highly expressive, and Oseman understands how to use pauses and repeated panels to capture the awkwardness of a first relationship.
Nick’s coming-out journey is also handled in carefully judged stages. He doesn't make one sweeping announcement to the entire school. He first tells Tara, someone he believes will understand and protect his confidence, and that experience gives him enough reassurance to take the next step.
His eventual conversation with his mother is the emotional high point of the volume. Nick has already begun to accept himself, but saying the words aloud to someone he loves still terrifies him. His mother’s response is warm and uncomplicated without diminishing how difficult the moment is for him. The fear belongs to Nick; the narrative doesn't need to manufacture parental cruelty to justify it.
It's enormously valuable to see a queer coming-out story that doesn't end in rejection, homelessness or violence. The existence of darker and more painful stories remains necessary, but queer characters also deserve narratives in which disclosure leads to greater intimacy rather than catastrophe.
Oseman doesn't pretend that homophobia has disappeared. Harry’s treatment of Charlie is humiliating, aggressive and entirely believable. What she offers instead is the possibility that prejudice doesn't have to be the final authority over a young person’s life.
For all its warmth and emotional sincerity, this volume still remains a very slight story.
Across almost 300 pages of its central chapter, relatively little happens. Nick apologises for leaving the party, begins a secret relationship with Charlie, researches bisexuality, tells Tara, confronts Harry and eventually comes out to his mother. These are meaningful developments, but they're surrounded by numerous variations of the same romantic exchange.
Nick and Charlie kiss, blush, exchange nervous looks, send affectionate messages and repeatedly reassure one another. The repetition reflects the intensity and awkwardness of first love, but it also slows the narrative. Individual moments are charming, but accumulated together, they start to feel interchangeable.
The book’s sweetness is also both its principal attraction and one of its limitations. Nick and Charlie are almost unfailingly thoughtful with each other. Even when secrecy places pressure on the relationship, there's little sustained conflict between them. Problems generally arrive from outside the couple and are resolved through yet another loving conversation.
This creates an emotionally safe reading experience, but it also reduces the complexity of the relationship. First love can be tender and respectful while still containing frustration, selfishness, resentment and misunderstanding. Oseman occasionally gestures towards these possibilities but rarely allows them to disrupt the prevailing atmosphere for long.
Charlie’s position is particularly underexplored. He's already been involved with Ben, who was willing to kiss him privately while refusing to acknowledge him publicly, and Nick's clearly a kinder and more trustworthy person, but Charlie is nevertheless being asked to enter another hidden relationship.
That parallel should carry considerable emotional weight. Charlie agrees to secrecy with incredible patience, but we see very little of what the arrangement might cost him. His fear of being hidden again, or of discovering that Nick will never be ready, remains largely beneath the surface.
As the narrative shifts towards Nick, Charlie increasingly becomes the person Nick needs him to be: patient, reassuring, emotionally perceptive and endlessly forgiving. His compassion is lovely, but it risks turning him into a source of support for Nick rather than a teenager with his own complicated needs.
And the supporting characters are similarly limited.
Tara and Darcy provide Nick with evidence that a happy and open queer relationship is possible, but they receive little development beyond that function. Elle remains present without being given much space of her own, and Harry is almost entirely defined by his homophobia, while Tao’s suspicion of Nick is more interesting than the novel allows it to become.
Tao has legitimate reasons to be protective of Charlie. He remained beside him during the bullying and knows that Nick is connected to the same social group responsible for much of that pain. His distrust could have introduced genuine moral complexity: Nick's kind to Charlie in private while continuing to associate publicly with boys who make Charlie feel unsafe.
Instead, Tao’s behaviour is often presented as exaggerated interference. His concern is understandable, but it's not explored deeply enough to make him feel like a fully realised counterargument to the romance.
Harry presents the opposite problem. His prejudice is credible, but he operates primarily as a narrative device designed to force Nick into making a choice. When Nick punches him after he uses a homophobic slur, the incident becomes proof that Nick will finally defend Charlie and reject the expectations of his old friendship group.
The story acknowledges that hitting Harry was wrong, yet the confrontation remains a rather neat and conventional turning point. Harry is cruel; Nick reaches his limit; the punch symbolically separates him from the person he no longer wants to be. The moral lines are so clearly drawn that the scene leaves little room for ambiguity.
The artwork might also divide readers. Oseman’s loose monochrome style is undeniably expressive, but backgrounds are often sparse or absent. This keeps attention firmly on the characters, but it can make their world feel visually underdeveloped. Readers looking for intricate environments, detailed composition or greater experimentation with the graphic-novel form might find the illustrations overly simple.
The book’s origin as a serialised webcomic is also visible in its construction. Scenes are designed around small emotional rewards, like a kiss, a text, an embrace, an apology or a moment of recognition. These beats work beautifully when encountered individually online, but collected in a single volume they can produce a stop-and-start rhythm rather than the structural density of a story conceived as one complete book.
But none of these limitations makes the volume unpleasant to read. They simply leave it feeling less substantial than its page count suggests.
Reading this immediately after Volume One made the two books feel almost inseparable. The first volume establishes the friendship and leads Nick and Charlie towards their first kiss; the second deals with its emotional consequences and allows Nick to understand what that kiss revealed about him.
There's much to admire here. Alice Oseman approaches bisexuality with clarity and compassion, gives Nick the freedom to arrive at his identity gradually and refuses to suggest that his attraction to Charlie invalidates anything he previously felt. His coming-out conversation with his mother is quiet, moving and deservedly one of the series’ most emdearing scenes.
Nick and Charlie’s relationship is also genuinely comforting. Their affection never depends upon cruelty, manipulation or deliberate misunderstanding. They're two teenagers trying to treat each other carefully while confronting circumstances neither is fully equipped to manage.
At the same time, the volume relies heavily on that tenderness. Its limited plot, repetitive romantic exchanges and lightly developed supporting characters stop it from becoming as layered as it might have been. Charlie’s emotional history deserved more attention, Tao’s protectiveness required more nuance and the external conflicts are often resolved more simply than their implications warrant.
Ultimately, Heartstopper: Volume Two works best as an affirming story of first love and self-recognition rather than as a particularly complex graphic novel. It understands the importance of showing queer teenagers experiencing joy, safety and parental acceptance, and it offers those things without apology.
For readers seeking warmth, kindness and hopeful LGBTQIA+ representation, this continuation delivers exactly what the series promises. For those wanting greater narrative depth, visual complexity or morally complicated characters, its considerable sweetness might not be quite enough to disguise how slight the story remains.
🌈 Read this if you enjoy tender LGBTQIA+ coming-of-age stories
💞 A new relationship kept private while one boy finds his footing
🔎 Bisexual self-discovery and learning to name unfamiliar feelings
💬 Secret kisses, affectionate messages and first-love uncertainty
🏉 Standing against homophobia and the pressure to conform
🫶 Supportive friendships, parental acceptance and emotional safety
⚠️ Contains bullying, homophobia, physical violence and discussions of being outed.
Book Details
Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman
Paperback ISBN
978-1444951400 — Hodder Children’s Books trade paperback edition published in Australia on 23 July 2019.
Hardcover ISBN
978-1444972443 — Hodder Children’s Books special-edition hardcover published on 11 May 2023.
eBook ISBN
978-1444951417 — Hodder Children’s Books digital eBook edition published on 11 July 2019.
Audiobook ISBN
N/A — no audiobook edition is currently listed because Heartstopper: Volume Two is a visually driven graphic novel.
Genre
Graphic Novel; Young Adult Fiction; LGBTQIA+ Fiction; Contemporary Fiction; Romance; Coming-of-Age Fiction; School Fiction
Subgenre
LGBTQIA+ Graphic Novel; Queer Romance; Bisexual Coming-of-Age Fiction; First-Love Fiction; British School Fiction; Illustrated Fiction; Webcomic Adaptation; Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Tropes / Literary Threads
Friends becoming boyfriends; secret relationship; popular rugby player questioning his sexuality; bisexual self-discovery; first love; coming out; relationship concealed for safety; opposing friendship groups; protective love interest; supportive parent.
Publisher
Hachette Children’s Group under the Hodder Children’s Books imprint — the trade paperback and eBook editions were published in 2019, followed by the special-edition hardcover in 2023.
Series
Heartstopper — Volume Two and the second book in Alice Oseman’s continuing graphic-novel series.
Formats Available
Trade Paperback; Special-Edition Hardcover; eBook; Kindle; EPUB; Online Webcomic.
Audiobook Narrator
N/A — no audiobook edition is currently available.
Audiobook Length
N/A — the story is presented visually as a graphic novel and has not been released as an audiobook.
Original Release Date
11 July 2019 — commercially published in the United Kingdom by Hachette Children’s Group after first appearing as part of Alice Oseman’s online webcomic.
Australian Release Date
23 July 2019 — Hodder Children’s Books trade paperback edition distributed by Hachette Australia.
Page Count
320 pages — Hodder Children’s Books trade paperback edition.
Where to Buy Heartstopper Volume 2 by Alice Oseman
📚 Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. If you purchase through my Amazon affiliate links, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I also encourage supporting Australian booksellers such as QBD Books, independent booksellers, and self-published authors whenever possible.
Danielle Robinson is a literary critic and writer whose
work explores literature through the
lens of atmosphere, memory, culture, and emotional experience. Holding a double degree in philosophy and theology, she combines academic insight with a deeply refined aesthetic sensibility shaped by more than three decades working across the creative industries as an internationally published, multi-award-winning makeup artist, fashion stylist, and interior stager.
She reads widely and rigorously, reading and reviewing more than 200 books each year as both an ARC reader and commissioned critic. Through Silk & Sentences, Danielle approaches literature as something immersive and lived with — not simply stories to consume, but works that shape the way we think, feel, and move through the world.
She writes from her semi-rural Queensland home, where she lives with Alex, her husband of 33 years, their dogs Oscar and Paige, and an ever-growing library of books.
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