Reviews

Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn, David Levithan

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bungadinding's review against another edition

3.0

For the most part this book feels more like a bunch of writing exercises by the two authors, like they were exploring several different point of views and styles, but in the end it all failed to build a cohesive story. The writing feels so messy and meandering and not enough emphasis on themes that are more important & substantial to the story. But at the end it has a message that i really really like:

"It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close."

"Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it's difficult and treacherous and confusing."

protoman21's review against another edition

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3.0

Unfortunately the plot in this book was paper thin and the characters, though mostly interesting, did not bring enough to the table to carry us through an entire novel. The sections not narrated by Naomi, Ely or Bruce the Second were completely pointless and served as nothing but strange interludes into a story that really was going nowhere to begin with. Naomi is a very selfish character and not very appealing, though interesting in the watching a train wreck way. Ely and Bruce are more lovable, but because Naomi has such a big ego, the rest of them feel like secondary characters in her story.

kaleyamo's review against another edition

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2.0

2.5 stars

I really wanted to like this book, but I had so many problems with it. If I wasn't reading it to fill a task for a reading challenge, I probably would have DNF'd it.

The positive —
There were some characters I liked. Bruce (both the First and the Second), boy Robin, and girl Robin.

The negative —
Naomi and Ely were both terrible . . . and as the two main characters, it's kind of hard to forgive.
1. When Naomi and Ely were having their big fight, I did not love her internal dialogue. For someone whose best friend is gay...she sure uses a lot of hateful language. (I.e., the f****t word.) Yikes.
2. Ely acted like he did nothing wrong when he kissed his best friend's boyfriend.

Spoiler

And then at the end, Naomi said Ely "did nothing wrong." Maybe they're bigger people than me but, no, if my friend is kissing MY significant other...they are both doing something wrong.

SO. MANY. POVS. In a book this short, I don't really understand the point. There were so many wasted chapters on insights of characters who were hardly mentioned elsewhere. I really think it would have benefited from sticking to Naomi and Ely. And maybe Bruce the Second.

I think my biggest problem is that it feels like the book didn't really go anywhere. There was one "revelation" — that shouldn't really have been a revelation at this point since these people are ADULTS — and that was it. Not a whole bunch of character growth.... It just fell flat.