REVIEW: "Naomi & Ely´s No Kiss List"

SYNOPSIS:

“Naomi and Ely are best friends. Naomi loves and is in love with Ely, and Ely loves Naomi, but prefers to be in love with boys. So they create their "No Kiss List" of people neither of them is allowed to kiss. And this works fine…until Bruce.

Bruce is Naomi's boyfriend, so there's no reason to put him on the List. But when Ely kisses Bruce, the result is a rift of universal proportions. Can these best friends come back together again? Or will this be the end of Naomi and Ely: the institution?”

Credits to Goodreads.com

REVIEW: 

After the success they got with their novel Nick & Norah´s Infinite Playlist, authors David Levithan and Rachel Cohn present us their new novel: Naomi & Ely´s No Kiss List. I really wanted to read this book, as I loved Nick & Norah´s love story. Besides, I watched the film a few months ago, and even if it is not as good as the book (as always), I loved it.

The novel introduces two main characters, again a girl and a boy: Naomi and Ely.  Naomi is best friends with Ely, they live in the same building, they grew up together and they share everything. However, even if Naomi knows that Ely is gay, she can´t help it and falls in love with him, so when Ely kisses Naomi´s boyfriend, their friendship is shattered.

I truly enjoyed the book. The authors maintain the essence and style they showed in their previous novels and deal with topics such as love, friendship and personal growth. Furthermore, each chapter is written from different character´s perspectives and the readers found themselves in the hilarious situations of having some characters that share a name, such as Bruce The First and Bruce The Second or even Robin Girl and Robin Boy. Almost all the characters live in the same building and they meet in the hall when they can´t sleep or they want to pass time and play Bingo.  Due to this, we get to know the characters from different perspectives, as they interact with some characters that also play the role of narrators.

Pros

As mentioned before, each chapter is told by a different character and that makes the novel easy to be read and helps the reader understand the secondary characters´ personalities, as their lives intertwine with the main character´s lives. As a result, Naomi and Ely´s misfortunes aren´t too tiresome and we have other characters that provide their own thoughts and problems to the narration.

In addition, the evolution and personal growth of the characters is quite evident in Levithan and Cohn´s work, especially Ely´s and Naomi´s evolution, from teenagers to young adults.

Once again, music is a key aspect in the authors’ novel. As it happened in Nick & Norah, music is present in this novel. Gabriel, the doorman, is a musician and records a cassette for Naomi, giving explanations of why those songs are important for him and showing the reader flashbacks about the day they met.

Cons

I honestly think the only drawback I found in the book is that I don´t think the authors entered into much detail while describing Naomi and Gabriel´s relationship and I wanted to read more about the two of them together.

All in all, I liked the book. In my opinion the plot is really original and the characters look very real. Naomi and Ely bring the reader to that moment after teenage years when things change, friends grow apart, you ask yourself if the steps you are following are the best for you and things that used to be simple and certain turn to be uncertain and incomprehensible.

Naomi and Ely´s No Kiss List follows the steps of some dear characters that need to learn to get to know themselves in order to face everyday problems, jealously, love and friendship.