We Contain Multitudes

I use GoodReads reviews as a public reading diary and usually I keep my reviews quite focus on the things that matter to me.

Not here.

I've come here to write about how average this book is and how the format of letters hurts it. I'm gonna get to that, of course, but first I must laugh at the popular negative reviews written by quite clearly Americans.

It might come as a surprise to the culture that thinks teenagers are mature enough to go and die invading foreign countries but not old enough to drink but teenagers date each other! Holy hell, the “age gap” debate is so stupid. It's a gap of three years. Jo is 15 and Kurl is 18. They're both in high school. Do you think teenagers are celibate until they mature? No! Teenagers are undergoing puberty. Most of them want to explore that.

Further, I see a lot of women commenting on the fact that this book has been written by a woman about a same-sex couple (not always that means both are gay, you should know that). It is beyond ironic how anyone can criticize a woman for writing about gay teenagers when they themselves are not male, gay, teenagers. As a member of the male species who has been in same-sex relationships, please be quiet.

This does however lead me to the homophobia of the sigh ‘butcherboys'. It served no point and was boring. Same as, really, most of the book it was just about nothing that important. The fate of Jo's mother and his familial troubles were great and I wish they were explored more but Kurl's side was done stupidly.

Honestly, the letter format needed to go and shift to a present tense of two POVs instead. Nobody writes letters with dialogue they had with the recipient of said letter. Like, what? That was dumb.

Jo was adorable. Kurl was okay.

I liked it because it's gay and I'm gay for all the gay things. Cheers