We're an Open Book
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| Between 2013-2014 I attempt to read a large selection of David Levithan novels. See the full list here |
I’m reviewing these books together because they are both pretty short and deal with the theme of young people who become part of something bigger than themselves.
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New Adult or NA novels seem to be taking over! Every week it seems like more and more are being released and this week I take a peek at two NA novels.
The Space Between by Victoria H. Smith
This New Adult novel follows the relationship of a pair of 19-year-olds from two different sides of Chicago; Derek, the privileged adopted son of a Senator and Lacey, a struggling opera prodigy from the wrong side of the tracks with a mother dying of cancer. When these to meet in a blaze of passion, they have to overcome racism, class and their own family to be together. Seeing a romance that focuses on a biracial girl and Korean guy was definitely a first for me and I liked that Victoria wrote about this type of relationship. The plot relies a lot on insta-lust and I was kind of annoyed of how Lacey is constantly described as desert with chocolate eyes and caramel skin. Falling on the steamier side of NA, so there are quite a few scandalous scenes. This is the first in a series, so I’ll be interested to get the other ones if I stumble across them. Also how great is this cover !- ★★★
If You Stay by Courtney Cole
Pax Tate is a selfish, trust fund baby with an addictive personality and Mila Hill is an orphaned artist living a quiet life with her sister. Their first encounter is anything but romantic when Mila discovers Pax overdosing in his car. This gruesome meeting unravels into a NA story that is the rather standard good girl meets broken bad boy with a fair share of steamy moments. The story packs on the melodrama and angst with everyone having dark secrets. After about the third revelation it started to feel a bit… soap-operatic ? This book also has healthy a bit of slut-shaming, which I think I’m just getting used to in YA/NA fiction at this point. I don’t know if this is done to create foils for the main female characters, but if you are an openly sexually active female, chances are bad things will happen to you. If you want an angsty, steamy romance this may be your kind of book. I think this story had a lot of potential in the beginning, but if you’ve read any kind of NA before this story will seem generic. Also,a month after reading it, I barely remember anything about it. – ★★ + .5
| Join Kat as she reads and reviews the works of David Levithan
from his debut novel to his National Book Award longlisted novel, Two Boys Kissing |
- Pages: 176
- Genre: Adaptation/ Paranormal
- Publisher: Dial (Penguin)
- Publication Date: December 1, 2006
In Marly’s Ghost, David Levithan collaborates with illustrator and author Brian Selznick who is best known for his book The Invention of Hugo Cabaret. Together the authors remix the story and illustrations of Charles Dickens’ classic novella, A Christmas Carol into a modern day Valentine’s Day tale.
This novel is a little different from most Levithan novels because it is essentially a packaged novel. In the back of the book Levithan discusses how this novel came about because he was approached by two Penguin editors to write a Valentine’s Day spin on A Christmas Carol. Once he had a theme down, he describes how he sat down with the text of the original and worked piece by piece to create Marly’s Ghost. Because this novel sticks so close to the source material and borrows much of the language from it has a different feel than Levithan’s previous books. …
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“It’s hard to believe in coincidence, but it’s even harder to believe in anything else.”
― John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
“I think the idea of a ‘mental health day’ is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it’s like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying ‘i don’t want to deal with things today’ and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide.
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
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- Release Date: April 6th 2010
- Pages: 304
- Genre: Realistic Fiction
- Publisher: Dutton’s Children (Penguin)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is probably David Levithan’s most well-known co-authorship and served as my introduction to David Levithan 2 years ago. I’d liked John Green’s vlogbrothers channel and decided to start reading his books. I got what I expected from Green’s writing, but Levithan’s just blew me away. It reminded me of how unique and diverse the voices in YA writing can be. For Days of David Levithan, I did a re-read of Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but decided to switch it up with the audiobook
Will Grayson,Will Grayson is told in the alternating perspective of two 16-year-olds named WillGrayson,each leading separate lives unknown to each other. Until faith and a little bit of bad luck has them cross paths. From that moment the story unravels as each Will Grayson is forced to examine everything they thought they knew about love, relationships and coincidence….
- Publication Date: September 18th 2012
- Genre: Science Ficton
- Pages: 386 (hardcover)
- Publisher: Little Brown For Young Readers
Synopsis: Across North America, flocks of birds hurl themselves into airplanes, causing at least a dozen to crash. Thousands of people die. Fearing terrorism, the United States government grounds all flights, and millions of travelers are stranded.
Among them are Reese and her debate team partner and longtime crush David, who are in Arizona when the disaster occurs. On their drive home to San Francisco, along a stretch of empty highway in the middle of the Nevada night, a bird flies into their headlights. The car flips over. When they wake up in a military hospital, the doctor won’t tell them what happened, where they are–or how they’ve been miraculously healed.
Things become even stranger when Reese returns home. San Francisco feels like a different place with police enforcing curfew, hazmat teams collecting dead birds, and a strange presence that seems to be following her. When Reese unexpectedly collides with the beautiful Amber Gray, her search for the truth is forced in an entirely new direction-and threatens to expose a vast global conspiracy that the government has worked for decades to keep secret.
Sitting in a Phoenix airport, Reese Holloway’s biggest problem is the humiliation of losing a national debate competition and letting down her partner and crush, David Li. And then things start falling out the sky. …
What is Days of David Levithan ?
It’s pretty fitting to start my reading David Levithan with his debut novel Boy Meets Boy. In fact, Boy Meets Boy just released its 10 year anniversary edition which has an excellent Q&A with Levithan in the back and I’ll be referring to a bit.
As I was reading this Q&A I began to think about how this novel is pretty significant to the “YA canon”, if there is one. In a lot of interviews about this book Levithan talks about how in 2004 there weren’t many books featuring queer teens, and if there were they usually leaned on the Bury Your Gay and the Gayngst tropes–that is a gay teen usually ended up dead or in another equally angsty situation at the end of the day. That’s not to say the intolerance doesn’t exist in the novel, but what Levithan does is offer a new narrative, a story of hope for those gay teens who never see positive stories about themselves.
Boy Meets Boy is exactly what it says on the cover. It’s about what happens when boy meets boy, but the plot is about if boy can keep boy. At the National Book Festival Levithan called this a “dippy happy love story” and I think that is the perfect description.
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