“Will Grayson, Will Grayson,” written by John Green and David Levithan, is a beautifully written story about two teenagers named Will Grayson who are attempting to navigate the ups and downs of their polar opposite lives, lives that turn into an intertwining roller coaster when the two meet.

First there is Will Grayson, John Green’s Will Grayson. “Don’t care too much and shut up.” Those were the words that Will lived by, until one day he didn’t. After a school-board member made a fuss about having a gay football player, Will decided to defend an old friend’s right to play. He wrote a letter to the school and signed his name, breaking his only two rules in life.

The first two pages of this book draw you in with the type of comedy one would expect from a John Green book, as Will Grayson describes his old friend Tiny Cooper as “the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.”

Will loses touch with his “Group of Friends” because of the letter, and his life is turned upside down. Now Will has Tiny, a boy who is writing a musical about himself and who falls in love with someone new every five seconds; and Jane, a girl who may or may not be gay but has a fantastic taste in music, a taste that Will shares himself. Their adventure begins with a 1990s band called Neutral Milk Hotel, fake IDs, and the cold air of Chicago.

But before we go any further with Will Grayson, let me introduce will grayson, David Levithan’s will grayson (I didn’t forget to capitalize his name; this is how it is written in the book). Now the best way I’ve been able to describe will is as a boy who is tragically homosexual. Levithan writes of a boy suffering from depression, and his stylistic choice of writing in only lowercase letters strengthens the meaning behind the words.

will’s chapters are filled with IM-ing and hatred for almost everything and everyone. The only two people he ever seems to talk to besides his mom are Maura, a girl who writes depressing poetry and who seems to be obsessed with will, and Issac, a boy from Ohio who will is desperately in love with.

Will and will never would have met if it weren’t for a very horrible night in Chicago, a night of failed love connections and new encounters. One Will Grayson meets another, and their lives become intertwined, for better or for worse.

My emotions took a few hits during my read of “Will Grayson, Will Grayson.” You’ll laugh and you’ll cry for your favorite characters, and you’ll learn to overlook the flaws of others (except for one character if you’re like me). I guarantee that you’ll fall in love with at least one Will Grayson and hopefully not want to strangle the other; and you’ll get to see them fall in love as well.

As one of the few books with LGBT themes out there, it is really heartwarming to see how much literature is diversifying. It is especially pleasing that, while the LGBT themes are very frequent throughout the book, they aren’t the whole story. To those who may not understand what I mean: it is just nice to see representation in the background; it normalizes things. The same goes for a central character having a mental illness, but the mental illness not being the entire story. It shows that we are not just one thing, not just one label, but that our lives are shaped by many aspects and many people.

So whether you are here for the laughs or here to be introspective, this book will draw you in with its interesting characters and creative style. With its alternating chapters, you will never get bored with your Will/will. You will be turning the pages non-stop, the pages that capture their messy and intriguing lives.