[Review] The Realm of Possibility - David Levithan

Title of Book : The Realm of Possibility
Author : David Levithan
Publisher : Ember

One school. Twenty voices.

Endless possibilities.

There's the girl who is in love with Holden Caulfield. The boy who wants to be strong who falls for the girl who's convinced she needs to be weak. The girl who writes love songs for a girl she can't have. The two boys teetering on the brink of their first anniversary. And everyone in between.

As he did in the highly acclaimed Boy Meets Boy, David Levithan gives us a world of unforgettable voices that readers will want to visit again and again. It's the realm of possibility open to us all - where love, joy, and the stories we tell will linger.

The Realm of Possibilities is one of my goodreads friends’ favorites. I’ve heard a lot about David Levithan so I thought this book must be good. When I first bought this book I didn’t realize until this book safely arrived at my home that it is written in verse. I’ve never read any books that are written in verse before so I was pretty excited.

This book consists of five parts. In each part, we’ll read poems or even song lyrics written by four teenagers. So, we’ll have total 20 characters in this book. If we really pay attention when we’re reading, we’ll find that these characters are connected to another through the poems. Some write these poems because they care about another character and some write because they hate another character. The connections between characters are vague because it's written in term of poems. So it depends on our interpretation of the poem.

‘When you break someone’s heart, you also break your own’

I love this book more than Boy Meets Boy. Levithan wrote these poems beautifully. The poems are simple but capable of reflecting the emotions that each character feels towards another character. I could feel raw emotions that come from the characters. Despite the fact that we can only learn about each character through a few poems, Levithan could make me sympathize with all 20 characters in this book. Another thing that I love from this book is when I was guessing who's connected with who and when I finally unfold the mystery between them after reading another character's poem.

‘you will always be my always’ 

This book begins with David’s poem and ends with Jed’s poem. David is actually in a close relation with Jed and that makes a nice prologue and epilogue for the book. This book could be a quick read, but if you really want to understand the connection between each character and really feel the emotion of each character, I suggest you to read it slowly.

All in all I love this book. The Realm of Possibility makes me want to read another Levithan’s book. This book is a kind of book which I’ll reread whenever I’m feeling sad or just want to have a nice read.