What did you think the relationship in this book was?

[Amanda]

I think it is meant to be read either way, with the main characters having any gender identity. I started reading it with that in mind (that it was ambiguous enough to be any kind of relationship). However, as the book progressed I found myself identifying the narrator as male and the love interest as female. Certain aspects of these characters led me to that understanding at the end, but that was just my personal reading. I still think it could be read either way and I do think it is something each reader ends up deciding for themselves.

[Reed]

I was paying attention for this, and I know the narrator referred to himself as a "boyfriend" at one point, but the subject character never got a gender stated. You don't have to play the pronoun game when you write in the second person, and I'm pretty sure leaving the subject's gender up to question was intentional; it allowed the subject to be either (or any) gender.

[Marilyn]

It really does not matter. This for sure is a unique book. The author usually writes something for every Valentine's Day.

[kris]

Well, given how this is a David Levithan book, I read the entire thing with the assumption that it was a relationship between two male characters, personally.

[Kate]

I thought they made reference to the woman being pregnant... I could be mistaken but I was sure that this was between a woman and a man. But I think it's cool that it's sort of ambiguous.

[Alyssa]

I felt like it could have been either way... in the end, love is love and hurt is hurt, so who really cares if this book was gay or straight?

[Evelyn]

I wasn't sure. I thought it was purposely ambiguous so that many readers could identify with it.

[Michael]

I thought it was pretty straight forward that it was between a man and a girl.

[Gabriela]

kris wrote: "Well, given how this is a David Levithan book, I read the entire thing with the assumption that it was a relationship between two male characters, personally."

So did I.

[Sarah]

What I love about this book is that the author let it be genderless; let it be a soulful exploration of love in general. It brings up a really interesting point: do we love a person's soul or their gender? Personally, I always pictured it as a straight relationship since I'm straight, but it could be seen either way. But there was one clue: didn't the narrator's lover tell him she was pregnant at one point? Or did I imagine that?

[chris]

Sarah wrote: "What I love about this book is that the author let it be genderless; let it be a soulful exploration of love in general. It brings up a really interesting point: do we love a person's soul or their..."

yes, at the beginning.

[[deleted user]]

Obviously, the two characters are one male and one female, because the author refers to himself as boyfriend, and in the second or third definition - I think it's 'abstinance' - his partner says 'I'm pregnant'

[Flora]

I began this book knowing the author generally wrote gay fiction and I was hoping I would be able to imagine a lesbian couple within the book but after trying really hard to imagine it that way I gave up because I felt like the narrator was definitely male and the lover female. I was disappointed in the way the author left out pronouns but the reader wasn't exactly free to imagine the characters whatever gender they wanted. Although one section that had said something along the lines of: I called you honey in front of your sister and your face looked as though I had shown her pictures of us having sex. Gave me the idea that maybe it was a gay relationship that the sister was not exactly okay with because calling each other honey would seem more normal to a heterosexual couples family.

[J. Kenwell]

As I read it I thought of it as alternating narratives between a guy and girl. I saw some passages as his, some as hers.

[Molshree]

I think the story was about a relationship between the narrator, a woman named Joanne and another woman named Kathyrn (might have spelled that wrong).
He was originally in a relationship with Joanne but once they broke it off he fell in love with her best friend Kathyrn. I personally do not think it was a relationship between a homosexual couple, but that is a very interesting way to think about the storyline and makes me want to read the book again with that perspective to see if I can unearthed a new layer I might have previously missed.