Review Detail

Reader reviewed by jocelyn

HOW THEY MET, AND OTHER STORIES is an amazing collection of stories about love by brilliant author David Levithan. Each of these stories is fantastic in its own way, but theyre all so different! Some of them are more my kind of story than others, but even in those that were not my very favorites, I could recognise awesomeness. Every one created such great characters, and was so memorable. I felt like I wanted to read an entire novel about the characters in each story. Thats my only complaint; there wasnt enough! Ill talk now about a few stories I really loved.

Starbucks Boy is a really fun story about a boy who is hired for a babysitting job. His charge likes to go to Starbucks (he assumes that this must be normal for a child from New York City; after all, shes got to be more sophisticated than kids where hes from), and there he sees the Starbucks boy. According to Gabriel, every Starbucks has one, and hes always out of reach. Or is he? I really just adored this story, the first in the book. This is one of the ones in particular that I wanted a whole novel out of. Seriously, David, make this one into a novel!

The Escalator, A Love Story is a lovely story about a typical high school couple. Its just so honest and candid and wonderful. Thats all I have to say on the matter. Ill leave you wondering. Go buy the book and read it.

The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes is another fantastic story. Its about a couple who meet on an airplane, as the title suggests. Totally wonderful and totally random&Right? Coincidences leading up to love is a big theme in quite a few of these stories, exemplified by the last one in this collection, Intersection (which is short, thought-provoking, and amazing).

Princes also really blew me away. It is another one that feels like it could be a novel, but, as they all are, its also completely wonderful on its own, without any more added to it. The characters and their relationships are amazing here.

I could probably gush about each and every story in the collection, even those that werent quite my cup of tea like A Romantic Inclination. Even if short stories are not necessarily your thing (they arent really mine), I would strongly suggest you read this book about love, in so many of its different wonderful forms. Just as love is varied, these stories are all so incredibly different; what they have in common, though, is that they are spellbinding, simply brilliant, just wonderful.

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