You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan – Review

Title: You Know Me Well
Author: Nina LaCour
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary/GLBT
Publication Date: June 7th, 2016
Pages: 248
Publishers: Usborne Publishing
Rating:

Goodreads Synopsis:

Who knows you well? Your best friend? Your boyfriend or girlfriend? A stranger you meet on a crazy night? No one, really?

Mark and Kate have sat next to each other for an entire year, but have never spoken. For whatever reason, their paths outside of class have never crossed.

That is, until Kate spots Mark miles away from home, out in the city for a wild, unexpected night. Kate is lost, having just run away from a chance to finally meet the girl she has been in love with from afar. Mark, meanwhile, is in love with his best friend Ryan, who may or may not feel the same way.

When Kate and Mark meet up, little do they know how important they will become to each other—and how, in a very short time, they will know each other better than any of the people who are supposed to know them more.

Told in alternating points of view by Nina LaCour and David Levithan, You Know Me Well is a story about navigating the joys and heartaches of first love, one truth at a time.

I absolutely loved this book!

Spoilers may occur!!

This book is based on 2 main characters Mark and Kate who go to the same school and even sit next to each other in Calc but never knew more than each other’s name. Until they find each other in the same night club called “Happy Happy” on the kick off night for pride week in san Francisco. Mark is with his best friend and love interest, Ryan, but when he starts talking to Kate and gets distracted by what’s happening with her, Ryan takes off and starts dancing with another guy. Kate has just run away from the chance to meet the girl she is interested in for the first time. Somehow they end up together and they go off on an amazing adventure together that starts it all.

I really enjoyed the message behind this book and I also love that the message can have meaning to someone even if they aren’t Gay or Lesbian like Mark and Kate are.
I love how this shows that in under a week so much can happen and so much can change. Within one night Kate and mark go from basically strangers to best friends.

I loved the writing style and how everything was spaced out. I feel that so many writers are now going back and forth between characters point of view in each new chapter. I do love it though, it allows you to see more of the story and also you can get to know more than just one character.

So that there isn’t a tonne of spoilers in this review I will not talk about the plot much and instead I will just talk briefly about each of the major characters and why I enjoyed them in the book.

Firstly, Kate. She is a very relatable character as its so many people’s instinct that when they get put in an awkward situation or they get scared or nervous they just run away from it. I love the message betrayed in this book that you’ve just got to force yourself not to run and things could actually work out for the better.

Mark is also kinda relatable. He is in love with his best friend who doesn’t love him back in the same way and he gets extremely hurt when Ryan goes to talk to a different guy and they hit it off. When Mark finally lets all his feelings out to Ryan and Ryan told Mark how he saw things, Mark was definitely hurt at the start. This just shows that you have to just get things over and done with and it may hurt at first but afterwards, you realise it was the best thing to do. Which is another amazing message! Also, I love how Mark reacted when Ryan needed him even though they were kinda fighting and at first he didn’t want to do it, that’s true friendship.

Lehna is a difficult character to work with. It is understandable about how she reacted but at the same time, you kinda want to hate her for it. But eventually everything works out and you learn to love her again.

Ryan is a character that you love and hate at the same time. You hate how he makes Mark feel and how everything went down but at the same time you love him and feel for him. It’s a hard thing for some people that you are coming out as gay and it shows his struggles.

Uma and June, you don’t really find out much about them in the book except that they just want their friends to not fight and be friends again.

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This book is a really quick and easy reading but it has so much meaning. I recommend this to anyone!!

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