Are We There Yet?

Author: David Levithan (a side note about this author, all of his other books have strong homosexual themes and are usually about gay teens. If that is something you are interested in, he's an author for you. If not, then this is really the only book by him that I can recommend.)

Pages: 215
Rating: PG-13, for several drug references, slight language, and vague references to sex.

Summary: Sixteen-year-old Elijah is completely mellow and his 23-year-old brother Danny is completely not, so it’s no wonder they can barely tolerate one another. So what better way to repair their broken relationship than to trick them into taking a trip to Italy together? Soon, though, their parents’ perfect solution has become Danny and Elijah’s nightmare as they’re forced to spend countless hours together. But then Elijah meets Julia, and soon the brothers aren’t together nearly as much. And then Julia meets Danny and soon all three of them are in a mixed-up, turned-around, never-what-you-expect world of brothers, Italy, and love.

My Thoughts: I have read this book at least three times, not because the story itself is particularly moving, but because Levithan is a master of words and language. The sentences he strings together never cease to amaze me. Here's an example. "He feels the antithesis of alone, because he is in the company of circumstance." Or "The buildings line the canals like sentences—each house a word, each window a letter, each gap a punctuation." It's just....deep the way he writes. And the story really isn't bad either. Two brothers, so far apart, sent on this random trip to Italy together, somehow manage to come to terms with each other by the end. It's a good one. And I love it.