collected
About 4 h 30 min · at 30 minutes a day, about 9 days
Estimated from the page count of this edition. Dense books can take longer than the estimate.
On a high school lawn, seventeen-year-olds Harry and Craig attempt to break the world record for kissing, facing thirty-two hours of thirst, exhaustion, and public scrutiny. Around them, other boys navigate new love, established relationships, and painful isolation. A chorus of gay men who died of AIDS narrates these contemporary lives, connecting the boys’ experiences with memories of a generation they never knew.
Tender and mournful, the YA novel alternates between the boys’ immediate concerns and the narrators’ reflections on love, loss, and survival. Those reflections frequently interrupt the action, so the storytelling can feel more meditative than dramatic. Sexual detail is mild, but homophobia, family rejection, and suicidal despair are central subjects.
Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).
Established
Somewhat. The prose is direct but lyrical, while the braided storytelling moves among several boys and a collective voice of gay men who died of AIDS. Their reflections frequently interrupt the action, making the structure more demanding than the language.
The romance is tender, but grief and painful isolation give it a mournful weight. New love and established relationships sit alongside the narrators’ memories of loss and survival, keeping warmth and hope close to sadness.
Suicidal despair is a strong, central subject, alongside homophobia and family rejection. The boys’ experiences of love and belonging unfold alongside painful isolation, while the narrators reflect on AIDS, loss, and survival.
The content notes flag mild sexual content.
It suits someone drawn to character, relationships, and a distinctive narrative voice. The chorus connects contemporary boys’ lives with an earlier generation’s memories, giving reflections on love, identity, and belonging as much weight as the immediate action.
224 pages in the Ember 2015 paperback edition.
Ember · 2015 · Paperback. ISBN 9780307931917.
About 4 hours 30 minutes at 50 pages an hour, based on the 224-page Ember edition. Dense books can take longer.
David Levithan is an American author and editor whose work ranges from young adult fiction to formally playful literary fiction. He is especially associated with novels that place gay and other queer characters at the center of social and romantic life. Boy Meets Boy established his characteristic blend of openness, humor, and emotional directness, while Two Boys Kissing broadens adolescent experience through interwoven stories and a collective chorus shaped by the memory of AIDS. Levithan often begins with a strong formal device, then uses it to test how identity and affection persist under pressure. In Every Day, a continuously changing body turns romance into an inquiry about personhood; The Lover’s Dictionary reconstructs a relationship through alphabetized fragments. Across these different forms, his prose tends to be conversational, witty, and occasionally lyrical, with close attention to voice and the negotiations within friendship and love. His parallel career as founding editor of Scholastic’s PUSH imprint, focused on new young adult writers, complements his sustained interest in making room for voices often kept at the margins.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Romance · Young Adult · Identity
