Hey! For this month, September, of book club, we had to read the many 4th normal book ever: Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I had already previously read this book, but it was a while ago so I decided to re-read it, all for you guys! Haha ;)
So let me just start off by saying that I surprisingly re-read this book in 5 days. It is a lot shorter than Empire of Storms but I still feel super guilty. Especially since my direct tbr after EOS was supposed to be A Shadow Bright and Burning. But I promise that that's my next read, and after all the positive reviews I read and saw in Bookstagram and twitter I'm super excited to get into. (Btw if you want to follow me on instagram I'm: @goldstormbooks and on twitter: @AbbyW123) I actually read all of John Green's novels, or all the popular books, because he was super popular at one point. This was like 2 years ago, so I really remeber like nothing from those books, other than that I didn't really like them. 2 years isn't that long of a time but with all the books I read per year back then, I didn't remember half of them a year later (usually the worse half, no offense). I didn't like his work because at the time I think it was too mature, and somewhat depressing for me to read. I ended up reading The Fault in our Stars, because everyone did, right before the movie came out on June 6th, 2014 (Book came out 2012). Actually I might have even read TFIOS in 2013, but since everyone was reading it, someone obviously had to spoil the ending for me. Thanks so much... That's another reason why I don't like John Green's books that much, it's because one of the main characters sometimes dies, or close to dies. Ugh... I ended up going on a long reading spree of all his books, just like everyone else, and reading: Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Let it snow, The Fault in Our Stars, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I didn't like any of these books except Let it Snow, so I'm very unsure why I kept reading them. Lmao...
Anyways moving on to the actual review of the book...
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a contemporary, young adult novel, co-written by John Green and David Levithan. The novel is written in different perspectives and follows the lives of two teenage boys, both named Will Grayson, in high school, trying to work out their own problems with their friends, romantic interests, and life in general. One of the boys is depressed and is also bi-sexual, so he is struggling with his romantic interests and his perception of life as a whole. And the other boy is just lost in life and is struggling with making decisions and actually caring. The whole plot is leading up to an incident when the two boy's worlds collide and them both growing a lot as a result. Since this was a pretty short book, only 310 pages, I might not have as much to say about it as usual.
The setting of this book is a very basic contemporary, realistic fiction, type setting. Most of the time they are either at home, at school, or in a car. The scenes that take place at school are probably the most frequent and also the most described. Since it is in two perspectives and they live in different areas, it follows two different schools. It really describes the area well, and takes on the added bonus of distance between the two cities. The settings are two suburbs of Chicago: Evanston and Naperville. In a certain part when they go into Chicago, which is where they meet, they actually mention going to the "Bean" and Millennium Park. The settings aren't too creative, and the houses all vary, so I'm gonna go into more detail on the characters. Which are by far the most detailed part of this book.
The characters, however, are what make up this story and hold it together. They are the main thing the story has going for it. Okay so obviously as I mentioned before there are two Will Graysons, who are the main characters in the book. The first one is probably the John Green one and he is straight, and has a best friend named Tiny, let's just call him Will 1. The second Will Grayson is gay and was probably written by David Levithan (but I'm not 100% sure), let's call him Will 2.
Will 1 is just a normal boy who doesn't really care about school, or girls, or life, at the beginning of the book. He is just an individual who's motto is "shut up, and not care", so obviously at first glance he's super boring and not very developed. But as the novel goes on we learn that he actually cares a lot about other people, and feels a lot of emotions that he just doesn't want to show. He especially really develops feelings for a girl named Jane at the end, and expresses his love for his best friend Tiny. Will 1 also really likes punk-rock music, and is goes to a few concerts throughout the book, sadly he only gets into one with Tiny's help. Another thing that actually was a big part in this book was music. Throughout the book there were a few, obviously fake, bands called The Maybe Dead Cats and Neutral Milk Hotel. I say obviously fake, because um come on, you can see that... Cause like who would actually name a band The Maybe Dead Cats... And because at one point Will 1 actually emails the band, and they email back... So a character that plays an extremely big role in both perspectives is Tiny. Despite his nickname he is said to be huge (big-boned) and very gay. I'm not saying this to offend anyone but in the novel they actually said that a few times so I'm just quoting it. He is a super happy person who looks at life and never blinks or cries, or breaks down, like ever. He is directing, writing, and starring in a play about his whole life and about how hard it was to come out. At the end of the novel the play takes place and is said to be a hit. Another important character in this POV is Jane. Jane is originally a friend of Tiny's, but in the end becomes very close to Will 1. Throughout the novel Jane gets Will to care more about his life, and he starts to really like her. Obviously she is his main love interest.
In the other Will's POV however things aren't so great. Will is struggling with the duel hardships or being gay, and coming out, and also suffering from depression (he has pills). He also is living in a house that is quite old, with a single mom, who is actually an amazing characters and loves Will 2 very much. He has to go to school and work as well just to live, so obviously he had it rough. He also doesn't have many friends at the beginning and the only one he though he could trust turned out to be a lie. So honestly, I felt really bad for him especially since he has no actually friends that he could turn to, and nobody knew he was bi. A character that at first was just a normal girl, but then pissed me the hell off, is this punk girl named Maura. This girl... I just can't even. She was so bitchy to Will 2 the whole time she knew him, and was also "depressed" and sick of life. So whenever they hung out together they just mopped around and suffering in their overall depression together. As you can tell it was a terrible, toxic friendship and no one benefited. Also halfway through the book Maura did something which was so obviously out of line, and let's just say she was pretty much kicked out of that POV for it. Will 2 also had a lunch group, which consisted of 2 guys named Derek and Simon, that he honestly didn't talk to at all. Throughout the book, Will 2 actually got a lot better, made a lot of new friends and changed as a person completely. He met Tiny, made some new friends, and came out to his friends and mom. His life improved drastically, but so did Will 1's throughout the book.
As you can tell, this book is not for just anyone. It deals with many mature issues, and I would definitely not recommend it to anyone under 14 years. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book a lot more reading it a second time, as I am older now. It's just a lot easier to get and take in when you're older. As well it includes a lot, like A LOT, of swearing and also some PG 13 scenes. I would say that this book wasn't bad, and I quite enjoyed it. It was very funny at parts, and made me laugh out loud. I would give it a 7.6/10 because as I said it wasn't too bad and it did make me laugh, but it wasn't one of my favourite reads. As I said before I read this book for book club, so hopefully I'll have another post up tomorrow summarising the meet, as I will be attending tonight.
And As always Thank you so much for reading! - <3 Katia
So let me just start off by saying that I surprisingly re-read this book in 5 days. It is a lot shorter than Empire of Storms but I still feel super guilty. Especially since my direct tbr after EOS was supposed to be A Shadow Bright and Burning. But I promise that that's my next read, and after all the positive reviews I read and saw in Bookstagram and twitter I'm super excited to get into. (Btw if you want to follow me on instagram I'm: @goldstormbooks and on twitter: @AbbyW123) I actually read all of John Green's novels, or all the popular books, because he was super popular at one point. This was like 2 years ago, so I really remeber like nothing from those books, other than that I didn't really like them. 2 years isn't that long of a time but with all the books I read per year back then, I didn't remember half of them a year later (usually the worse half, no offense). I didn't like his work because at the time I think it was too mature, and somewhat depressing for me to read. I ended up reading The Fault in our Stars, because everyone did, right before the movie came out on June 6th, 2014 (Book came out 2012). Actually I might have even read TFIOS in 2013, but since everyone was reading it, someone obviously had to spoil the ending for me. Thanks so much... That's another reason why I don't like John Green's books that much, it's because one of the main characters sometimes dies, or close to dies. Ugh... I ended up going on a long reading spree of all his books, just like everyone else, and reading: Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Let it snow, The Fault in Our Stars, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I didn't like any of these books except Let it Snow, so I'm very unsure why I kept reading them. Lmao...
Anyways moving on to the actual review of the book...
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a contemporary, young adult novel, co-written by John Green and David Levithan. The novel is written in different perspectives and follows the lives of two teenage boys, both named Will Grayson, in high school, trying to work out their own problems with their friends, romantic interests, and life in general. One of the boys is depressed and is also bi-sexual, so he is struggling with his romantic interests and his perception of life as a whole. And the other boy is just lost in life and is struggling with making decisions and actually caring. The whole plot is leading up to an incident when the two boy's worlds collide and them both growing a lot as a result. Since this was a pretty short book, only 310 pages, I might not have as much to say about it as usual.
The setting of this book is a very basic contemporary, realistic fiction, type setting. Most of the time they are either at home, at school, or in a car. The scenes that take place at school are probably the most frequent and also the most described. Since it is in two perspectives and they live in different areas, it follows two different schools. It really describes the area well, and takes on the added bonus of distance between the two cities. The settings are two suburbs of Chicago: Evanston and Naperville. In a certain part when they go into Chicago, which is where they meet, they actually mention going to the "Bean" and Millennium Park. The settings aren't too creative, and the houses all vary, so I'm gonna go into more detail on the characters. Which are by far the most detailed part of this book.
The characters, however, are what make up this story and hold it together. They are the main thing the story has going for it. Okay so obviously as I mentioned before there are two Will Graysons, who are the main characters in the book. The first one is probably the John Green one and he is straight, and has a best friend named Tiny, let's just call him Will 1. The second Will Grayson is gay and was probably written by David Levithan (but I'm not 100% sure), let's call him Will 2.Will 1 is just a normal boy who doesn't really care about school, or girls, or life, at the beginning of the book. He is just an individual who's motto is "shut up, and not care", so obviously at first glance he's super boring and not very developed. But as the novel goes on we learn that he actually cares a lot about other people, and feels a lot of emotions that he just doesn't want to show. He especially really develops feelings for a girl named Jane at the end, and expresses his love for his best friend Tiny. Will 1 also really likes punk-rock music, and is goes to a few concerts throughout the book, sadly he only gets into one with Tiny's help. Another thing that actually was a big part in this book was music. Throughout the book there were a few, obviously fake, bands called The Maybe Dead Cats and Neutral Milk Hotel. I say obviously fake, because um come on, you can see that... Cause like who would actually name a band The Maybe Dead Cats... And because at one point Will 1 actually emails the band, and they email back... So a character that plays an extremely big role in both perspectives is Tiny. Despite his nickname he is said to be huge (big-boned) and very gay. I'm not saying this to offend anyone but in the novel they actually said that a few times so I'm just quoting it. He is a super happy person who looks at life and never blinks or cries, or breaks down, like ever. He is directing, writing, and starring in a play about his whole life and about how hard it was to come out. At the end of the novel the play takes place and is said to be a hit. Another important character in this POV is Jane. Jane is originally a friend of Tiny's, but in the end becomes very close to Will 1. Throughout the novel Jane gets Will to care more about his life, and he starts to really like her. Obviously she is his main love interest.
In the other Will's POV however things aren't so great. Will is struggling with the duel hardships or being gay, and coming out, and also suffering from depression (he has pills). He also is living in a house that is quite old, with a single mom, who is actually an amazing characters and loves Will 2 very much. He has to go to school and work as well just to live, so obviously he had it rough. He also doesn't have many friends at the beginning and the only one he though he could trust turned out to be a lie. So honestly, I felt really bad for him especially since he has no actually friends that he could turn to, and nobody knew he was bi. A character that at first was just a normal girl, but then pissed me the hell off, is this punk girl named Maura. This girl... I just can't even. She was so bitchy to Will 2 the whole time she knew him, and was also "depressed" and sick of life. So whenever they hung out together they just mopped around and suffering in their overall depression together. As you can tell it was a terrible, toxic friendship and no one benefited. Also halfway through the book Maura did something which was so obviously out of line, and let's just say she was pretty much kicked out of that POV for it. Will 2 also had a lunch group, which consisted of 2 guys named Derek and Simon, that he honestly didn't talk to at all. Throughout the book, Will 2 actually got a lot better, made a lot of new friends and changed as a person completely. He met Tiny, made some new friends, and came out to his friends and mom. His life improved drastically, but so did Will 1's throughout the book.
As you can tell, this book is not for just anyone. It deals with many mature issues, and I would definitely not recommend it to anyone under 14 years. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this book a lot more reading it a second time, as I am older now. It's just a lot easier to get and take in when you're older. As well it includes a lot, like A LOT, of swearing and also some PG 13 scenes. I would say that this book wasn't bad, and I quite enjoyed it. It was very funny at parts, and made me laugh out loud. I would give it a 7.6/10 because as I said it wasn't too bad and it did make me laugh, but it wasn't one of my favourite reads. As I said before I read this book for book club, so hopefully I'll have another post up tomorrow summarising the meet, as I will be attending tonight.
And As always Thank you so much for reading! - <3 Katia
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