#RyanandAvery #NetGalley I really enjoyed reading this novel. David Levithan is a great writer and storyteller. I wish that there were more novels like this one for the LGBTQ community. A must read!!!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.

I adored Two Boys Kissing, so when I saw David Levithan was coming out with a book featuring two of my favorite characters in that book, I was thrilled. And this book certainly delivers. It’s definitely more character driven than plot heavy, but that’s not to say there isn’t any conflict. The characters and their relationships are beautifully drawn, and there’s no need to read Two Boys Kissing first, because all the major related plot points in that book are recounted here (but you should read it anyway. It’s great). It’s slow paced, but I found myself reading it quickly. I also love how Ryan and Avery’s relationship is shown thorns and all. They both have moments of friction or uncertainty, and that made it feel more real, because real relationships do have those moments and aren’t all perfect all the time.

Ryan and Avery is such a charming story! It follows the first ten dates of queer couple Ryan and Avery who meet at a local queer prom. From the moment that the two of them meet on the dance floor there is an undeniable connection between them. It is not all sunshine and rainbows though as they go through their dates. There are several more difficult issues that they are forced to deal with if they are to remain a couple.

Navigating the world around us is never easy but it comes with even more complications if you are not fully out of the closet. This is what Ryan is dealing with. The only person that he has ever been completely open with is his aunt. She is the one who supports him and who also helps him dye his hair blue. I loved their relationship and how protective and loving she was of him. I also enjoyed how she immediately accepted Avery into her life because of how important he was to Ryan.

Where Ryan is gay and has blue hair, Avery is trans and has pink hair. He does not hide himself and wants Ryan to do the same. Even when he faced with transphobia, he refuses to let it take away his joy. Joy is a central emotion through out as we go through the ups and downs of their first ten dates. While tackling homophobia and transphobia, there is also this central string that pulls all the characters together and that is to not be afraid to experience real everlasting joy. It is just so well done. David Levithan does such a phenomenal job when he creates his characters so full of heart.

The fact that Ryan and Avery does not follow a completely linear timeline when going through each of the dates gives the story that much more heart. You also get to see the relationship from each of their perspectives and learn their passions and their fears. These characters grow together and the way their dynamic grows and changes helped keep me invested in their story. In fact, I really want to know what happened after date 10. Are they still together? Are they happy? I sure hope so!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Ryan and Avery is everything I'd expect from David Lavithan.
If you're looking for a nice ya romance, look no further.
It's a sweet, gay, coming of age romance.
Told in dual pov style, each boy is fully brought to life and easy to get to know.
The story includes a transgender character, bullying, homophobia, and parental problems.
As usual, the author brings to life a realistic sense of many of things the characters would be dealing with in real life. It's all well done and worth a read.

Two of the boys who were kissing in Two Boys Kissing! I’m so glad David Levithan revisited these two since we know how their story continues. Getting to see how they meet and fall in love made everything that much more beautiful.

One of the things I’ve come to really love about Levithan’s writing is how he plays around with structure. In this, we get Ryan and Avery’s first ten dates. But we don’t get them in chronological order. It’s such a simple choice, but it’s the best one for this book. Somehow, we know them more deeply by the end of this book this way than if we had read their story from the beginning through.

I wanted to go back and reread Two Boys Kissing after just to get more Ryan and Avery.

i have been a loyal follower of levithan's work since i was in middle school, and i am so excited to see a return to the sweet, tender YA romance genre from him. i thought the secondary characters in the narrative were well fleshed out and the relationships between the boys and their parents were authentic. no one was painted as 100% good or 100% bad, which i appreciated. the pacing sometimes was a bit wonky, and i personally was not the hugest fan of the telling of the dates out of order, this was a very nice, light read that i hope all queer kids get a chance to peruse.

This book is genuine, raw, and simultaneously uplifting and heartbreaking. Levithan is an auto buy author for me and I adore his writing. I’m never disappointed, and Ryan & Avery is no different. I love the scattered timeline and it’s handled so deftly. It’s atmospheric and if you remember your first love, this story is a beautiful ode to that. The trials, tribulations, and all consuming fire that is your first love. I adored this story.

A beautifully tender dual POV YA coming of age love story between two queer teen boys! Told in a series of ten first dates we get to know Ryan (gay) and Avery (trans) as they meet, fall in love, experience difficulties with bullying, homophobia and unsupportive parents. I really enjoyed how this was nonlinear - starting on their fifth date and ending with their first and then last.

What a charming teen love story! Not at all angsty, or like everything else. Very sweet story about first love & figuring out how things should go.

Blue and Pink belong together. I loved this. Honestly, the author never fails. This is great. It was just the cutesy reprieve that I needed.

I've been reading David Levithan's books for well over a decade now (ew I'm old) and he never disappoints. This story was a beautiful journey through young love and the issues of adolescence. I will say that I got a bit mixed up since the chapters aren't chronological, but I still enjoyed my time with this story.

This is such a sweet book!

It tells the story of Ryan and Avery in a series of ten dates. I love books that have unique chronology like that.

It is a queer love story by one of my favorite authors -- David Levithan!

For some strange and unexpected reason, this was my first David Levithan book. As an avid YA reader my whole life, I’d always heard of David Levithan, but had never actually picked any of his novels up. This is crazy because he’s been a bestselling YA author for as long as I’ve been a reader. Going into this story, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it would be a cutesy love story with the complexities of gender and identity mixed in with a small town vibe. It was not that. Ryan and Avery were two characters in David Levithan’s popular book Two Boys Kissing. This is their spinoff story.

What I loved about Ryan and Avery was just how introspective and deep the characters were. Ryan and Avery are both trying to figure out how they fit in the world and more so, if the world will accept them as they are. There’s plenty of fear, but more than that, there’s yearning for acceptance and hope that they will be welcomed without question and judgement. At the same time, there are heavy doses of reality that not everyone can move past their understanding of gender conformity and the expectations tied to biology.

There were many moments in this story where I had to reread a line and let it sink in. David Levithan writes in a way that is eye-opening but so subtle that it borders on profound. The way little moments are captured and the nuances of emotions are written with such clarity, you kind of wish everyone could see the world with David Levithan’s eyes. It would be a much nicer place.

I appreciated that this was not a story about discovering your gender. This was a story of two boys going through the very nerve-wracking emotional rollercoaster of dating as a teenager when you really, really like someone and desperately want it to work out. Told through 10 dates, out of order, Ryan and Avery discover what they mean to each other. While some people might dislike that this was told out of order, I actually felt that it enhanced the development between Ryan and Avery. Their growth as a couple is not linear. There are ups and downs, and challenges to their relationship that worked well with a skewed timeline.

Ryan and Avery encompass all that awkward, heavy, and real nervousness-the uncertainty of what to say and if the person you like will judge you. The conflict over wanting to open up and share, but being scared of saying too much or burdening someone new with your baggage. These delicate feelings happen in every relationship and David Levithan writes about them in a way that everyone can identify with, no matter your age or gender.

While I liked this book, I felt like something was missing. Ryan and Avery were so much in their own heads that I feel like even though there were 10 dates, a lot of the focus was on how others would see them or what was going on in the background. I wish there was more focus on JUST Ryan and Avery. I would have loved a world of only their emotions and their interactions with each other as they blossomed into more complete versions of themselves. But at the same time, that’s unrealistic and inauthentic. It’s impossible to block out the world around you, even when the person sitting across from you, on the perfect date, has become your whole world. Maybe I just wanted more. The pacing was also a little slow for me.

Overall, if you’re looking for a raw, honest portrayal of two teen boys falling into something like love and wading through all the emotions that come with it, this is for you.

This was a lovely book that focused on Ryan and Avery and their first ten dates. It went back and forth between the dates. There is a lot of emotion in this book and I did sometimes feel like it became over dramatic at times but I think that’s very real to the experience of being a teen.

Two characters from Levithan's "Two Boys Kissing" get their own book. This is a sweet love story told out of order by outlining their various dates. This is not groundbreaking but it is heartwarming to see the acceptance of their relationship by most of the teens and adults in their lives.

In this book, we follow two teens as they navigate a new relationship. I liked that the chapters jumped forwards and backwards in time to show us the different dates they went on. Before I realized that the timeline wasn't linear, I though I had accidentally picked up a sequel. Actually, the book comes back around to show their meeting and first few dates.

I have read other books by David Levithan and always enjoyed them--this was no exception. I would have liked to get to know the other characters a bit better and hope that these groups of friends will appear in future stories.

The first chapter is absolutely stunning and one of the most heartwarming things I can remember reading in quite a long time. It set a high bar that Ryan and Avery only occasionally met in subsequent chapters. This is a lyrical, moving exploration of first queer love, gorgeously realized and expressed by David Levithan; it more than makes up for some of the more rote setups and conversations and story beats.

4.5 stars

4.5 stars

Ryan and Avery first met at a queer prom, where they felt an almost instant connection. One blue-haired boy (Ryan) and one pink-haired boy (Avery) knew that they had to see each other again outside of the dance. But jumping into their first serious relationship might not be the smooth ride they initially expected.

Told through their first ten dates, Ryan and Avery experience all kinds of things: a snowstorm, being grounded, meeting the parents, cast parties, and everything in between. As they experience these things together, their relationship just grows stronger and stronger.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy of Ryan and Avery by David Levithan to review! David Levithan has always been on my list of top authors. In this book, his poetic prose is on full display. There are just some gorgeous lines scattered throughout this book that, while the story is not told in a linear fashion, you still get relationship growth. It really is an overall gorgeous piece of writing.

Case in point, here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book:

“Queerness is stolen moments and stolen victories. It is stolen time and stolen glances. It is the thrill of the theft, for sure, but also the knowledge deep in your heart that none of this stealing is wrong. It is, in fact, the most honest thing you can do.”

There are just these gut-punch quotes throughout the book, about identity, about queerness, and about relationships. Overall, this is very much a quiet, character-driven novel, and I appreciated that about it. Some of those novels end up being favorites.

David Levithan is definitely one of the pioneers of queer YA lit; he was writing about happy gay teens before a lot of people were. While this book isn’t quite the utopia presented in Boy Meets Boy, there is such an element of hope to the overall story. Yes, there are darker parts, but they are outweighed by Ryan and Avery’s love for each other.

If you’re a fan of quieter, more character focused stories, I’d definitely recommend picking this one up when it comes out this September!

I really wanted to love this book, but alas I did not. Ryan and Avery are character from a previous book that I have not read, and perhaps that is part of the problem. It describes a series of dates of these teenage boys, one of who is trans. One of my problems was that the dates were out of order, so there was not a sense of continuity or progression in their relationship. The writing is also very introspective, so the reader is inside the heads of the two characters, much more than they interact with each other or anyone else. I think I might have felt like I knew them better if I had seen more interaction. That said, I really liked these two characters and was cheering them on. I would recommend this with some reservations based on the organization and character development.