Title: Date Me, Bryson Keller
Author: Kevin van Whye
Publisher: Penguin/Random House
Length: 336 Pages
Category: Young Adult Romance
At a Glance: Date Me, Bryson Keller is one of the finest Young Adult novels I’ve read in quite some time. It’s funny, poignant, heartfelt and genuine. I loved it all the more for its honesty and the immense sensitivity and compassion with which Kevin van Whye tells his story.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: Everyone knows about the dare: Each week, Bryson Keller must date someone new–the first person to ask him out on Monday morning. Few think Bryson can do it. He may be the king of Fairvale Academy, but he’s never really dated before.
Until a boy asks him out, and everything changes.
Kai Sheridan didn’t expect Bryson to say yes. So when Bryson agrees to secretly go out with him, Kai is thrown for a loop. But as the days go by, he discovers there’s more to Bryson beneath the surface, and dating him begins to feel less like an act and more like the real thing. Kai knows how the story of a gay boy liking someone straight ends. With his heart on the line, he’s awkwardly trying to navigate senior year at school, at home, and in the closet, all while grappling with the fact that this “relationship” will last only five days. After all, Bryson Keller is popular, good-looking, and straight . . . right?
Review: Kevin van Whye’s debut novel, Date Me, Bryson Keller, is, in a word, fantastic, and exemplifies everything a good book should be. It’s sharp in its observations; its message is heartfelt and uplifting; its protagonists are sweet and funny and genuine, and their obstacles and dilemmas are met with a warmth and understanding that only someone familiar with those experiences could write with such care and attention. If this novel is indicative of the author’s overall gift for storytelling, I want more.
Fake boyfriends is not a new or unique trope, but rarely has the concept charmed me the way it did in this novel. The dreaded dare is given a workout when the most popular boy at Fairvale Academy, Bryson Keller, accepts the challenge to date someone new every week until Spring Break to prove that high school romance is overrated. As the competition heats up to be the first girl to ask him out each Monday morning, it’s that frenzy which unintentionally leads to Kai Sheridan getting there first to do the asking one fateful day. After all, the rules stated someone new, it was never specified that that someone had to be a girl. Not that Kai—the very much not out to anyone Kai—had planned to ask Bryson to date him. That challenge happened in a moment of pique, so imagine Kai’s shock when Bryson—the very straight, popular soccer star Bryson—accepts.
The process of Kai and Bryson spending time together, becoming friends, and Bryson taking his dates with Kai every bit as seriously as he did the dates with the girls who’d come before, reveals something so much deeper than this being a simple game. In fact, it isn’t long before Kai begins to wonder if Bryson isn’t as straight as he’d thought. When Kai discovers that Bryson is taking their dates much more seriously than it being a mere means of fulfilling a bargain, the tenderness in the story and the way van Whye communicates it with patience and sincerity, crystalizes. This novel isn’t all fluff and romantic tropes, however, and it’s when the story touches upon some of its heavier topics—being in the closet, the deeply ingrained fear of coming out, the questioning and exploring of sexuality, and, ultimately, the horror of being forced out—that this book truly shines.
Date Me, Bryson Keller deals in a forthright way with its representation and the importance of a story that its teenage audience may be able to see themselves in, or see in themselves. It’s made up of high school angst and pathos and happiness and first love at its most elemental, and while I am far from the book’s target audience, I still found a personal and profound connection to it that made me love it all the more for its honesty and the immense sensitivity and compassion with which Kevin van Whye tells a story that is so obviously personal to him.
You can buy Date Me, Bryson Keller here:
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