Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

[lightreads]

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I guess if I were the sort of person who bought books for young teens I cared about, I'd get them this one. But I don't buy books for teens because I generally don't care about them. (The teens, I mean. I care about books plenty.) And that, I think, is the problem.

It's a slight, cute LGBT high school romance, set in an island of utopian well-adjustment. The quarterback is also the homecoming queen, the narrator came out to his parents at the age of five, and their only reaction was to think it was cool that he'd learned a new word, that sort of thing. It's basically saying, 'what if gay kids got to have romances like their straight peers, where the big question is does he like me? and not will we be relentlessly tormented until hanging ourselves in the garage is the only way out we can see?' It's a gay teen romance without homophobia or identity insecurity (at least for the narrator), and it's about how in this world he's just a kid like any other, with a silly crush and bad romantic judgment and sweet, mixed up friends.

Except, you know, I don't care about teenagers. So for me, the answer to the question -- what do you get when you write a gay teen romance without the gay angst? -- is that you get teen romantic angst. And that's boring.




View all my reviews

Comments

[cahn]

Well, I don't know; I care about (at least a small set of) teenagers a lot, but... caring about teenagers and caring about books means that I tend to buy books for teenagers that I find, you know, interesting. Which generally means no teen romantic angst of any sort whatsoever, or as little as I can get away with, anyway...

[lightreads]

I think the value is that this book completely normalizes sexual orientation and non-binary gender expression. It's not just that the narrator has no angst about being gay, or that his best friend is a drag queen, it's that no one cares. And you just don't find books like that, because lgbt young adult is always about the gay angst and the suicidal ideation and etc. So for someone young who had never been exposed to this completely normalized viewpoint, it would be awesome. For me...I've got my life, so I don't need that.

[jadelennox]

It takes place in happy slash world. So if you have happy slash world, then...

I find it adorable, but then I passionately care about books for teens, so that makes sense. I don't disagree with the single word you said about it.

[cahn]

Oh, yeah, I do get the value in this kind of book (the book that did it for me, when I was that age, was Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen, where I, along with Talia, was shocked, shocked! that no one actually seemed to care that half the characters were in same-sex relationships, it was completely normal! and that was very valuable for me, having at least three different cultural norms saying to me that it was abnormal). And I think it might be worth telling my teen friends to go check (this book) out from the library, or put it on a reading list for them.

I think all I'm saying here is that I have such a low tolerance for teen romantic angst myself that I can't bring myself to buy it for the teens I care about, even if it would be valuable. Now, if there were a plot involved as well... then we could talk. Perhaps I'm just saying that, like you, I care more about the books than the people? :)