Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an e-arc of this book.

Jo and Kurl are paired up by their English teacher to be penpals for a school assignment. A few grades apart, they don't really know each other but do know of each other. Kurl is one of the football stars of the school, eerily calm, but has the reputation for getting into fights. Jo dresses like he's from another time, loves to reference Walt Whitman, and is openly gay. So naturally they start out their assignment only being aware of the differences between them. But soon they become friends, and then more than that. When each faces personal dilemmas, they will have to fight to hold on to each other... or they will have to let go.

This book wasn't perfect, but it was sweet and beautifully written. The way both Jo and Kurl make references to Walt Whitman and various musicians and describe the way they feel about different situations and each other is lovely, even when lovely stuff isn't happening in the book (and I will warn you, spoiler free, there is some drama in the book that I didn't love but man is it well-written). I think that this is going to become one of those LGBT contemporary books that YA readers are really going to like.

Sadly this book did not bring me even a sliver of happiness. And it was one of my most anticipated 2019 releases!

rtc on my blog closer to publication date

SPOILERS THIS REVIEW CONTAINS THEM A BIG ONE ACTUALLY BIG SPOILER


We Contain Multitudes was a gorgeous book. Reminiscent of Aristotle and Dante and I'll Give You the Sun in terms of heartrenching beauty. We follow Adam "Kurl" Kurlansky and Jonathan 'Jo' Hopkirk as they're partnered together in an English class pen pal writing assignment. The book is told through the letters the two exchange, each one dated so it's easy to follow along to what's happening and when. I greatly enjoyed this book. I loved both Kurl and Jo and the fact that they had very distinctive personalities and I loved them equally as characters. However this is getting one less star because of the fact in the midst of a kind of break up with Jo, Kurl winds up having sex with Jo's sister who NEVER BRINGS IT UP OR APOLOGIZES I kind of didn't like her.

Great development of the characters of Jojo and Kurl especially through the use of the letter writing assigment they have to do for their English class. The letters gradually reveal deeper and deeper parts of them to each other as they fall in love. The epistolary format is deftly used here and once you start reading, you don't want to stop until the end. Highly recommended.

Jonathan and Adam are an unlikely pair assigned to write to each other by their shared English teacher. Jo and Adam "Kurl" start off as barely tolerant of each other, forced to communicate for their school assignment. They are different from each other in every possible way including age, social status, interests and family life. Over the course of writing each other they become first friends and eventually lovers. This is a lovely and compelling LGBTQ love story, however telling the entire story through letters that these two teenage boys are writing to each other felt very forced at times and it was hard to overlook the awkwardness.