Name: Caitlin
Grade: 12 (soon to be 12+! :])
Book: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Authors: John Green and David Levithan
Will Grayson is just an ordinary guy; he lives under the radar and follows the rules of not making a scene or speaking up. For such a cowardly and shy character, Will's best friend is surprising. Tiny is anything but tiny; in fact, Tiny is one of the biggest people Will had ever met. Along with being a huge football player, Tiny is also very, very homosexual. He's larger than life and definitely the heart of the book; if they were to make a movie of this book, no one would ever be able to live up to how amazing Tiny is. This book follows Will Grayson to the most unlikely place, a shady porn shop, where Will Grayson meets Will Grayson.
The second Will is a completely different character; in love with a guy he met online and fighting his way through depression, his parent's divorce, and living in the lower bracket of the middle class. He has few friends and a dark outlook on life. As these characters collide, their lives are changed by Tiny and through Tiny they change each other.
Not to mention the underlying plot of one big, gay musical authored by none other than Tiny himself, a girlfriend, several boyfriends and lots of characters learning a thing about life.
This book was brilliant in so many ways. For one thing, John Green is one of my favorite authors; when he joined with Levithan, who wrote Boy Meets Boy, the book was destined to be a success in my eyes. John Green's lough-out-loud humor and unique viewpoints for characters paired with David Levithan's unique perspectives into how people are as well as his knack for bringing light and happiness into the predominantly angst-riddled subject of homosexuality gives this book a depth I rarely see. The best thing about this book, however, is that it tricks you into thinking the book is about the Graysons, then it's about Tiny, and then it's back to the Graysons again. Even after I've finished it, the book was about all three of them separately, but by the ending it was about all three.
The only downsides to this book for me was that in all collaborative books, the authors always miss some small things that could have been followed through, but were missed; another fault I saw was that depressive Grayson didn't use any capitalization and, being a grammar nazi, it bothered me, even if I did understand why they did it.
Overall, this book was wonderful and human and masterfully written. It was everything I like in books: funny, heartbreaking, beautiful, and everyone figures out how stupid they were in the beginning.
Why I picked up the book: I've been on a John Green kick and it also had a pretty cover :)
Why I finished this book: I really could not put it down
I'd give this books to: Anyone looking for a really, really, great-growing up story.
My Rating for this book: *****
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