Will Grayson, Will Grayson – book review

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a hilarious and uplifting book, written by John Green and David Levithan.

Will Grayson meets Will Grayson. One cold night, these two strangers are about to cross paths in the most unlikely of places. From that moment on, their worlds collide and their lives intertwine.

It’s not that far from Evanston to Naperville, but Will Grayson and Will Grayson might as well live on different planets. When fate delivers them to the same place at the same time, the Will Graysons find their lives overlapping and hurtling in a whole new and unexpected direction.

With a push from friends both new and old – including the massive, and massively fabulous, Tiny Cooper, a musical theatre extraordinaire – Will and Will find love where they never expected to find it: through the epic production of history’s most awesome high school musical.

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So I hadn’t read this book until now. I know, I’m a bit late. But that’s only because I have a slight irrational fear of books that are written by more than one writer. That’s crazy though, because I’ve read other books with more than one author and I’ve loved them – Let it Snow and These Broken Stars are a just a couple of examples of this. I suppose it’s not extremely common to have a book co-written and I think it would be hard to do. However, by reading Will Grayson, Will Grayson, you wouldn’t this that was the case. This book flowed so perfectly and I absolutely loved the alternating chapters. I think the idea was that John Green wrote one Will Grayson and David Levithan wrote the other Will Grayson.

Let’s just stick on the topic of alternating chapters and different Will Graysons for a moment. The two different Wills were written completely differently. One was written in your average prose, the other without any capital letters and with dialogue: like this. The writing style of the latter originally threw me off a little. It was very unique, I’ll give it that. However, in the beginning, I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. The more I read, the more I realised how much I actually enjoyed reading from that style. There weren’t any unnecessary verbs – verbs… who needs them anyway? – and the lack of capitalisation was something I’ve never come across before.

So I suppose I should at least mention the two Will Graysons. This may be a little confusing because there are two of them, but let’s see how we go. The first Will we come across is funny and loveable and friends with the hilarious and gay Tiny Cooper. His attitude to things were to not care too much and to shut up. He’s an over thinker and likes to keep his distance from most. He’s the type of guy that would rather slink in the shadows of high school than be in the spotlight. I loved his somewhat shy and sweet personality and how he would notice even the smallest things about a particular girl. I know that most guys aren’t like that – heck, I haven’t even come across one guy like the guys John Green writes about – but it’s cute nonetheless. That’s why boys in books will always be better than the ones in real life. *sigh*

The next Will we have is almost completely different to the previous Will. He’s a closet homosexual, dark, brooding and depressed. There’s parts of him that’s cute and soft, but his overwhelming vibe is sad and complicated. And everyone knows that I’m a sucker for the dark and brooding boys. This Will is complicated and hard to predict, and that’s one of the things I liked most about him. However, it did take a little bit of time to get to know him and really understand him. I do think that the writing style with this Will fit his personality perfectly. Remember what I was saying about the lack of capitalisation before and the strange dialogue? That originality matched this Will really well because I felt like Will was a no-nonsense type of guy. And that’s what you’ll get with him; pure honestly, even if it hurts sometimes.

But the more I think about this book, the more I realise it isn’t really about the Wills. It’s actually all about Tiny Cooper. It’s often said that Tiny is the world’s largest gay person, but I think something is more true. He is a guy with the biggest personality and biggest heart in the whole world. He is honestly the sweetest character I’ve read about and I loved everything about him. However, he is very stereotypical and cliché, so some people may not like him because of that. I just thought he was hilarious and I loved him. I loved his passion for theatre, how much he cared about his friends and also his perseverance. He poured his heart into everything he did and that was really lovely to see.

I think my favourite thing about this book is the amount of humour it has in it. I was literally laughing out loud every couple of pages. Tiny is the funniest person ever and his production was one of the best things I’ve ever read. I really have to read Hold Me Closer – the companion novel to this book (and Tiny’s actual production) – now! I also really loved it when the two different lives of the Wills collided. They met in the most unexpected place and it was amazing to see how their lives become intertwined. How they reacted because of the differences in their personalities was also really fun to see.

I’d give Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan a score of 9 out of 10. Have you read this book or Hold Me Closer? What did you think of either of them? Should I read other books by David Levithan? Let’s talk!