This review was originally written and published in January 2014.

Alright, time to start up a new book.  And just in case there was any confusion about what kind of book this is, it starts out with some nameless male character drawing a nameless female character and angsting about how hard it is that he has to leave her.  You guys, you just don’t understood, theirs is a love for the ages, but he has to go!  It’s for her own protection! 

She still thought the pull she felt toward him was innocent, that their frequent rendezvous in the gazebo were merely … happy coincidences. To be so naïve! He would never tell her otherwise—the secret was his to bear.

 Oh, I see, you’re going to be one of those protagonists.  The ones that think not telling stuff is the bestest idea ever.  What even is the sense behind this?  Does the actual knowledge put her in danger?  And I mean, as in, magic will strike her down if the words make it into her head kind of thing, not just that somehow she’d do bad things if she knew too much.  Can’t have those ladies free to make their own choices, you know!  They’d just find a way to fuck it up and all.  

So, the nameless female arrives to confront the nameless male about leaving, and she’s all upset and want to go with him because they are so tots in love you guys, really.  Our male narrator informs us that “it always starts this way.”  And also that they’ve been hanging out near constantly for weeks. 

Then the lady gets teary-eyed and asks him if there’s anything better than their oh-my-god-you-guys love, at which point they make out and then shadows eat her face off. 

Well, okay, there’s a fade to black before face-eating, but it’s implied. 

So, let’s recap the actions of this guy we all know is going to be our romantic  hero.  He knows that making on this lady will result in noms time, or possibly her falling in love with him does?  Either way, he knows the end result and he sticks around for weeks getting close to her and then decides to leave?  Why not leave as soon as she shows up if you really care for her so much?  

Okay, so that was the prologue, and by rights I should move on to the first chapter now, but I want to take some time out instead.  At the start of this I staid “we can tell what kind of book this is” and, well, yeah.  We know going in that this is a romance, and furthermore that it’s a teen romance, and the book clearly isn’t trying to be anything else.  There’s a certain sense that you can’t complain about a romance being a romance.  You can’t pick up a romance book and be angry that it’s not horror.  It makes no sense.  Throughout this book, you will hear no complaints from me that this book has a focus on romance, even after it inevitably takes completely over.  (Can a romance plot “take over” if it is the plot?)  I can and will complain, however, about romance done creepy. 

 I’ll even try to keep to a minimum complaints about how their love is of cosmic importance, because apparently that’s literal in this case.  Annoying, but not much to be done about a plot point that basic except read another book.  

Instead, for the rest of this post, I want to share my thoughts on Romeo and Juliette with you.  Because this prologue had heavy shades of that, what with the whole “I can’t stop myself, I’m just so drawn to her even though I shouldn’t be” thing.  Because I think that the point behind R and J was not a love story, and it irritates me when people use the theme of love-sick teens who can’t control themselves as if that’s some sort of good thing. 

The thing with R and J is that they were both so young.  And as adults watching this play, we all know that the two baby teens on stage professing love for each other are going to grow out of it.  We’ve all been there.  We’ve all felt that first love rush, we’ve all thought it was forever and ever, and we’ve all made it through our eventual break up.  From an adult perspective, the R and J relationship is not one of perfect and enduring love, it’s a very normal bit of dramatics from two very average teens.  And so the play is not a love story.  Instead it’s a tragedy, because both their families were so wrapped up in their rivalry that they couldn’t see what was so obvious to the rest of us:  That if they’d just calm down and back off a bit, R and J would implode on their own in a week or so, instead of kill six people and get married.  The tragedy is not that they keep the two teens apart, it’s that they never needed to, and by over-reacting and pushing like they did, they made a mountain out of a molehill.  It’s not a love story, it’s a hate story. 

But somewhere along the line (or from the very start, I don’t know, maybe I’m reading too much into it), teens latched on to the story as proof that their first-blush love was huge and important.  They took from it that if they get the wild, impulsive desire to fuck authority and if they have hormone-driven lust episodes of uncontrolled FEELZ, well, that just means that it’s a love worthy of the ages. 

I think there is plenty of value in telling teen love stories.  I do.  I think there’s even no problem in telling them the way teens feel them:  Over-blown, wild, out-of-control, and intense.  Bring on the bad poetry and declarations of love after one week.  But I think that it’s also important to keep things in the proper perspective, because teens don’t have any life experience to work with, and lord knows they’re not going to listen to their parents.  Stories, books, movies, these are the things that teens learn from, these are the things that teens look to when they try to make sense of their lives.  And failing to give them a proper perspective isn’t doing anyone any favors.  Letting them become convinced that teen-hormones are anything other than teen hormones may make them feel good, but so does cake, and we all know what happens when you have too much of that.  Sugar crash and misery, that’s right.

Why can’t we just say that young love is awesome but fleeting?  Why can’t that headrush of feeling everything for the first time be cool without being anything else? Why can’t we send teens the message of “enjoy your feelz, because they won’t last long, so hang on for the rollercoaster ride.  But, you know, also don’t take your seatbelt off.”

Alright, even of that diversion, we’ll move on to chapter one tomorrow.