The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan

A modern love story told through a series of dictionary-style entries is a sequence of intimate windows into the large and small events that shape the course of a romantic relationship. 


I have to admit that I came across David Levithan's Twitter account (@loversdiction) first and it lead me to the book. Which should not have been the case if I really call myself an honest to goodness bookworm. Oh, well.

Nevertheless, the intrigue that started with all those interesting tweets led me to checking this book out. But despite them, I didn't really expect that the book was going to be in actual dictionary format and that the title was just cute-sy way of naming a book. So imagine my surprise and excitement when I finally got to the first page. And trust me, I was hooked by the very first entry.

And I say excitement because I think it was just pure genius how someone could come up in telling a story in this manner. I was wondering how can it be of ONE love story if they are just going to be word descriptions? But DL crafted it in a way that even if an event in the love story appeared somewhere in As, Bs, or Cs, you never got lost in stringing together what happened from the start until the end. The creativity of it all still amazes me and if anyone ever attempts to do something like this, it's just going to be a poor imitation.

Wait, is this how it feels if you read How To Choose Your Adventure? books from cover to cover? Just a thought.

In short, this is a beautiful book that manages to describe the myriad feelings associated with love in a fresher way that makes you say "That's absolutely right" even if at the same time you're thinking "Oh, I never looked at it that way."

SPOILER: I was hoping for a happy ending. With all the excitement on me getting my hands on this book, I thought I deserved a happy ending. But sometimes we don't really get what we want. But you know what they say about the journey being more important than the destination.


Final verdict: 9/10. Must read, must have.