Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan


Summary: This is the story of Paul, a sophomore at a high school like no other: The cheerleaders ride Harleys, the homecoming queen used to be a guy named Daryl (she now prefers Infinite Darlene and is also the star quarterback), and the gay-straight alliance was formed to help the straight kids learn how to dance. 


When Paul meets Noah, he thinks he’s found the one his heart is made for. Until he blows it. The school bookie says the odds are 12-to-1 against him getting Noah back, but Paul’s not giving up without playing his love really loud. His best friend Joni might be drifting away, his other best friend Tony might be dealing with ultra-religious parents, and his ex-boyfriend Kyle might not be going away anytime soon, but sometimes everything needs to fall apart before it can really fit together right.


This is a happy-meaningful romantic comedy about finding love, losing love, and doing what it takes to get love back in a crazy-wonderful world.


Review: This is my very first David Levithan book. Let me share a little story. I've been catching up on John Green's books recently and I told myself that I would work on David Levithan after because they are the 2 authors I hear the most about when people talk about Contemporary YA. I was going to have Will Grayson, Will Grayson be my first David book, but I wished that I could read Boy Meets Boy first because I've heard a lot of things about it. Imagine my joy when I see BMB in a used bookstore. Yep. So excited.

Now to the actual book. The characters were very well done. They were lovable, but flawed. It was nice seeing the different sides of them. Even though you're following this story through the eyes of Paul, he obviously has good and bad encounters with each of these other characters. Noah was sweet. He might be my favorite. Kyle, Tony, and Joni were all great characters as well. Tony actually made me think of a friend of mine in real life. Reading Tony's relationship with his family made me think that's how my friend would be treated if he was gay. Luckily, I don't have to worry about that since he's straight, but if he was gay I would have to give him this book ASAP.

The story was adorable. Probably what I liked most about it was that, to me, it didn't read like a "boy falls in love with another boy" story. Obviously that's what it was, but it felt like every other "girl and boy fall in love" story. That's important to me because I'm one of those people who believe that your sexuality doesn't matter.  Falling in love is falling in love. Maybe it's easy for me to say that because I'm never going to have to deal with the things some of these characters dealt with, but that's a personal conviction that I have. People have been getting so caught up in the "oh my gosh two people of the same sex are in a relationship". It shouldn't be about the people in the relationship, but the emotion in the relationship. If that makes sense. *Rant over. Sorry* I wish I went to Paul's school. The people there seem pretty tolerant of everyone regardless of if you're gay or straight. That's the only problem I had with the book. Paul's whole down seemed to be okay with everything and that's unrealistic. I like how light this book was considering how heavy a topic it is though. And to make up for the "perfect town" background, Paul mentions a couple of times that he knows there are schools/towns/families much less tolerant than his. Overall I thought this was a wonderful book and I can't wait to read more of David's books.

4 howls

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