Book for the: Journey...

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

By John Green & David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson follows the stories of two teenage boys on opposite sides of Chicago trying to find their way through life.

One Will Grayson follows two simple rules: 1) Don’t care too much. 2) Shut up. He feels he is constantly second to his best friend, Tiny Cooper, and doesn’t really know what he wants.

The other Will Grayson is depressed, lacking friends and generally spends his life hating everyone around him, to the point I was gasping and laughing shamelessly at his snarky comments.

On a chance meeting, they bump into each other and that’s where everything begins to change. Spoiler: They don’t get together - one is straight, one is gay - but to me, that makes it even better as you are following two brilliant separate character journeys.

The sub-plot focuses around Tiny Cooper and his production of a play called Tiny Dancer that they are putting on at school. Tiny is just…. Everything. He is, without a doubt, one of my favourite characters I’ve ever read but I won’t spoil anything about his fabulousness.

This book brings in the perfect explosion of Green’s in-your-face approach and Levithan’s fabulous character creation. Together they have brought to life a story of love and all of the ways you can experience love. More than that, it’s about friendship, which weirdly is one of the biggest things in our lives, yet we don’t see many books circling around this plotline. This was a refreshing change of pace for me in reading YA.

If you don’t know either of these authors, where have you been? John Green brought us both The Fault In Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, whilst David Levithan wrote the brilliant Boy Meets Boy.

Okay, so yes, part of the story is around love and these parts were great BUT didn’t make me swoon, hence this not making it into the Swoon category. This book however made me laugh. A lot. Out loud, full, ridiculous laughing throughout the whole book – and that’s a first for me!

Seriously, people were giving me weird looks and I was listening to this book at every given chance. I finished it in two days. I loved it and it was exactly what I needed after a few heavy reads.

Not to say this was all light and fluffy - it dealt with some serious issues - but the characters were so wonderfully written that I wasn’t bogged down in the grit. I was able to enjoy their quirks and thoughts. I wanted to hear each and every thing they were saying.

Some of the language is outrageous - and some of the lines had me spitting out my tea - but that makes it even better for me. This is how teenagers talk and these are characters that teenagers will easily be able to relate to.

I also loved, loved, loved the friendship between Will Grayson one and Tiny. This is one of the things that I just lap up in YA when it’s done right. Here it’s such an unusual friendship that just shouldn’t work, but it does and I love that.

I have both the paperback and audio version but I would highly recommend the audio version for the way the boys are portrayed and, of course, all of the singing!

There is absolutely no reason not to read or listen to this book – unless you are a hater of the fabulous in life or hate swearing.

On an end note, I have a genuine need for the play in the book to be real. AND I’m also hoping Tiny Cooper was based on a real life person because our world and everyone’s life needs a Tiny Cooper.