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I have been saving this book. Just waiting for the right moment for us to come together and love one another. And this book is fine, I guess. It's okay. But I really don't see the magic that prompted so many five star ratings and literary awards.

It's weird because I was sure we were meant for each other. A Printz Honor book featuring a gay romance between two quirky characters - one of whom is a rough guy who gets into fights and has a complicated relationship with his father; the other being a sweet and sensitive boy who loves his poetry. Throw in some philosophical musings and a generous helping of poetic teen angst and you should be serving up a new favourite of mine, right?

Apparently not.

I love deep, complex and emotional contemporary YA that reminds me why I still read books aimed at teens. But, you know, I just didn't find this book as deep and meaningful as it was obviously trying to be. There were some intriguing passages thrown in that were clearly meant to tickle our inner emos, like:

“The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.��

And:

“I wondered what it was we were laughing about. Was it just our names? Were we laughing because we were relieved? Were we happy? Laughter was another one of life’s mysteries.��

But it all felt like a good old example of trying too hard. The characters of Aristotle and Dante are two very different individuals who form an instant connection and go on to become close friends, but they never seemed like anything but caricatures of angsty teens with the pretentious poetry reading and frequent philosophical phrases that made me cringe.

The dialogue was particularly unrealistic. There are some writers who can pull off floaty poetic speech between their characters, and then there are those who fail to sound more than fake, overdone and scripted. In my opinion, this book was in the latter category. However, I feel this way about John Green and everyone seems to love him too, so it's hardly surprising that I once again find myself in the minority.

Not only does the constant waxing poetic feel a bit off, but the rest of the time we're treated to a choppy, fragmented narrative that gave me flashbacks to The Perks of Being a Wallflower. For example:

“When I got home, I sat on my front porch.
I watched the sun set.
I felt alone, but not in a bad way. I really liked being alone. Maybe I liked it too much. Maybe my father was like that too.
I thought of Dante and wondered about him.��

I think I get what this book was trying to do and I also get what many people probably thought it was doing... but I can point you towards authors who do a similar kind of thing and make it seem less cheesy and far more real and meaningful: A.S.King, Melina Marchetta, Matthew Quick and Sara Zarr, to name but a few. When compared to the works of those authors, these characters and this writing just pale in comparison. In my opinion, anyway.

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