A great realistic tale, but a little flat.
Genre: Y/A, Contemporary, Romance
No. of pages: 230
From Goodreads:
Naomi and Ely are best friends. Naomi loves and is in love with Ely, and Ely loves Naomi, but prefers to be in love with boys. So they create their “No Kiss List” of people neither of them is allowed to kiss. And this works fine…until Bruce.
Bruce is Naomi’s boyfriend, so there’s no reason to put him on the List. But when Ely kisses Bruce, the result is a rift of universal proportions. Can these best friends come back together again? Or will this be the end of Naomi and Ely: the institution?
I managed to read this in a day. And while I got a kick out of it, I was still a little ‘meh’ by the end.
There are a lot of different POV’s in this book, so if that is a pet hate, steer clear! You’ve been warned. However, I felt it worked. It was great to take a break from some of the angst of the main narrator and see the situation from someone else’s eyes.
The material was witty and had a charm about it appealing to the coffeehouse crowd. And the style of narration flows with a simplistic young voice. I didn’t get any surprises out of the story – it is easily predictable… but it is also realistic. And that I liked.
I must admit I was expecting to get more feels from a contemporary like this; especially with David Levithan’s authorship, but felt more like a snapshot of your typical college drama. And that’s okay, this novel does not purport to be anything but.
Coming from the president of the Fag-hag club of everywhere – My best gay friend of twenty years and I are still fiercely close – this book depicts the very real perils of having a G.B.F. It’s pretty cool to see a book like this written, back when I started friendship with my bestie, you definitely would not see mainstream literature of this kind. It is great to find a relationship that is something other than girlfriends, or a romance which has the possibility to last a lifetime. In life, most of anything does not fit in to a stereotype or fix in a square box.
I’m really looking forward to viewing the film released this month starring Victoria Justice and Pierson Fode (maybe a little later in Australia), and see how they interpret the novel.
Overall feeling: Cute.
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