Will Grayson, Will Grayson
John Green, 2010
Young adult Contemporary fictionRomance
Two boys named Will Grayson—one guarded, one lonely—collide with Tiny Cooper, a force of nature staging a musical about his love life. A witty, quick-moving story about two guarded boys, with alternating voices that keep the tone light even when loneliness and identity get serious.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy YA romance with sharp banter and characters figuring out who they are. The two narrators share the same name, so the alternating chapters may take a little while to keep straight.
Why read it
It gives you two distinct voices, a lot of humor, and a warm look at friendship and first love without pretending those things are simple.
A page from the book
Two rules for never crying again, and what they cost.
“You’re a robot,” he says. Tiny thinks that I am incapable of what humans call emotion because I have not cried since my seventh birthday, when I saw the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven. I suppose I should have known from the title that it wouldn’t end merrily, but in my defense, I was seven. Anyway, I haven’t cried since then. I don’t really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost—like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever—totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules. John Green.Co-written with David Levithan: the two authors alternated chapters, each writing a different Will Grayson, so the novel has two first-person voices named Will.
Books that feel like this
More by John Green
Looking for Alaska
John Green, 2005
A boy leaves Florida for an Alabama boarding school and falls in with a girl who makes every rule feel like a question worth breaking.
The Fault in Our Stars
John Green, 2012
A witty, dying teenager meets a boy who refuses to be solemn, and together they argue with oblivion, love, and the author of an unfinished book.
Paper Towns
John Green, 2008
A boy who has loved the girl next door from afar gets one wild night with her—and then she vanishes, leaving clues meant for him.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Will Grayson, Will Grayson for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy YA romance with sharp banter and characters figuring out who they are. The two narrators share the same name, so the alternating chapters may take a little while to keep straight.
- What is Will Grayson, Will Grayson like?
- A witty, quick-moving story about two guarded boys, with alternating voices that keep the tone light even when loneliness and identity get serious. About love and identity.
- What should I read after Will Grayson, Will Grayson?
- If you liked Will Grayson, Will Grayson, try Funny Story (Emily Henry), Love, Theoretically (Ali Hazelwood) and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Gabrielle Zevin).
A taste of the feed
The moment you realize you’ve been recast in your own love story.
The story tipped onto its side. Found a fresh point of view. And in this new telling of it, I was no longer the leading lady, but instead the teensy complication that would forever be used to jazz up their story.
Funny Story · Emily Henry
How a doctorate turns into a side hustle you never put on the CV.
Not that there would be anything wrong: sex work is legitimate work, and people who engage in it are just as deserving of respect as ballerinas, or firefighters, or hedge fund managers. But ten months ago, when I graduated with a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Northeastern, I figured that by now I’d have a reasonably remunerated academic position. I did not imagine that at twenty-seven I’d be paying my water bill by helping adult men pretend that they have dating lives. And yet here I am, fake-girlfriending my way through my student loans.
Love, Theoretically · Ali Hazelwood
How to say your life is in books without saying it.
The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry · Gabrielle Zevin
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