Levithan introduces us to a range of other young gay men: Tariq, who is recovering from a recent gay bashing; Ryan and Avery, two boys who meet at a same-sex prom at the opening of the novel and who bristle with the onset of first love; boyfriends Peter and Neil; and Cooper, a troubled, closeted young teen who spends his nights trolling gay hook-up sites under the guise of numerous profiles.

Hovering in the clouds above is a Greek chorus of gay men who died from Aids in the 1980s; they narrate the action below and provide a commentary on the changes in social attitudes in the intervening decades. While they are aware of enormous changes in the ways families now deal with homosexuality, they note that young people still confront homophobia and hostile parents.

The book has attracted almost universally positive reviews, and has been longlisted for the National Book Award in the United States. Reviewers have pointed to the strength of the chorus as a means of developing a cross-generational conversation. While the novel has much to recommend it, particularly for younger readers, for me it was weakened by the chorus, whose narrative, often monotone and mawkish, offers a revisionist historical perspective on the Aids epidemic and an overly sentimentalised take on youth and social attitudes.