LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Anyone who has lived beyond puberty knows that romantic love covers a spectrum of emotions, not all of them good.

It's this spectrum that author David Levithan demonstrates so well in How They Met, a collection of short stories for young adults that offer varying angles on the heart's entanglements -- most from a gay or lesbian perspective, and many with less than ideal outcomes. That's why the 18 pieces that make up the collection aren't called love stories but stories about love, which allows the author to show the emotion's multitudinous and messy permutations.

The book doesn't immediately clobber readers over the head with the negative. It begins with a lighthearted boy-on-boy crush story that has a happy ending. It's only in the second piece -- "Miss Lucy Had a Steamboat" -- that Levithan begins to go deeper, chronicling the painful if exhilarating trajectory of falling for someone who doesn't love you back and doing it with dark humor. See Stories explore winding roller coaster of romance @ Orlando Sentinel, FL.