Review: Världens viktigaste kyss

Världens viktigaste kyss by David Levithan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

After reading two of his books (this and Dash and Lily's book of challenges or whatever the original title is), I gotta say I'm not sold on this author. My biggest problem with this book was the POV, it's written in first person plural???? It's in we form, and the we is I guess gay guys who died of AIDS in the 80s. It just didn't sit well with me, and I would have preferred if it had been one specific dead guy seeing all these stories, rather than a bunch of nameless faceless people.

I did enjoy most of the stories and characters, even though I would personally never kiss someone for that long. Ugh, just the thought makes my skin crawl. The fact that it has happened for real makes me curious though, and I like that the author talked to one of the guys to properly describe the experience. I can only imagine the back pain you'd get after doing something like that.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the more the narrator bothered me. The "we" narrator. At one point they specifically tell you go download a song and listen to it, and at other times they're just sooo annoyingly preachy. Other times it just describes a lot of feelings that I suppose we should be able to identify with and I just don't. I think the story was strong on its own, and didn't need these constant interuptions from the narrator.

It also falls in the AIDS was a bad thing that happened to gays in the 80s trope that I dislike, and completely ignores the fact that it is still a problem today for a lot of people. I keep seeing this in books dealing with this topic, and while I understand that it must have been a horrible thing to live through, to have people blame you for dying, it still happens today and that is almost never mentioned in books like these, at least not as far as I've noticed.

And honestly, Cooper surviving didn't thrill me. I usually like a happy ending, but that just didn't seem right. It was also kinda gross that it was apparently based on a real event, even though the author tries to explain that he meant no harm by using it like that. No, it should've ended differently.

Oh well, it was a quick read and despite my dislikes it was enjoyable (it technically only took me a day to read it, but I did cheat and read the first twenty pages some days ago).

View all my reviews

True story.