Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List (review)

Naomi and Ely grew up across the hall from each other in their New York apartment building; inseparable friends from the start, they even weathered Naomi's father's indiscretion with one of Ely's lesbian mothers. Now that they're in college (though still living at home), Naomi finds it increasingly difficult to reconcile her public role as gay Ely's straight best friend with her secret desire to be his romantic partner, a dilemma that kicks their friendship into estrangement when Bruce, whom Naomi is currently dating, becomes Ely's new boyfriend. The complexities of this kind of gay/straight alliance aren't a subject that's been tackled much in literature for young people, and Cohn and Levithan (authors of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, BCCB 6/06) do it full and intelligent justice: Naomi is desperate under her cool exterior ("He was supposed to belong to me in the Happily Ever After"), shorting boyfriends and possible boyfriends as she yearns for the unattainable, while Ely wrongly attributes her rage to his trespass, not to the fact that he's apparently finally finding genuine love with someone other than her. A constellation of characters, ranging from Ely and Naomi to several of Naomi's romantic objects past and present to a college friend, narrate the story, allowing for a fuller picture of all the characters. Naomi and Ely are both vividly drawn, cool, edgy Manhattan kids with tenderness just below their fashion-forward exteriors; Naomi is particularly skillfully introduced, with her hopeless yearning in her own voice eliciting reader sympathy that stays even as she's demonstrated to be a manipulative diva. Essentially, this is the story of a long-needed breakup, one that will bring both participants strength and maturity as they let go of habit to see each other more honestly. Even readers who long for the pair's glamorous downtown lifestyle will sympathize with the vulnerable young people living it.