This book has a cute premise that has caught my attention at the very first glimpse but somehow, through my reading, I felt that the book might not be up to my interest. I'm truly sorry :( Maybe someone would enjoy this book more than I am.

The starting of the chapter was a bit slow and I find it hard to grasp what is what and I'm so frustrated that it took so long for the two main characters to be together. #icry

Anyway, I like that got to learn new thing from the book especially Tourette syndrome. I never heard before but now, I know.

I'm sorry but this is not going to be my last reading a book from the writer.

A Taxonomy of Love is a coming of age novel that spans the teenage years of Spencer and Hope. Rarely, if ever, do we get to see this many years in a character’s life. So many books I’ve read have centered around a single incident or a specific time period. With this novel, I felt as if I’d watched these kids grow up.

One of the perks of a novel covering so many years is the ability to cover a wide range of topics then see how they unravel and what short and long term affects they have on each character. The topics in this novel included Tourette syndrome (a neurological disorder), bullying, sibling rivalry, death, multigenerational relationships, young love, first times, and interracial relationships in the south. Whew! That’s a tremendous amount to fit into one story, but Rachael Allen does it seamlessly. The events and characters are woven together just like real life.

The relationships between the characters are what make this story special. They are realistic, not neat and wrapped up in a bow. The kids are faced with hardships and triumphs and it is how they deal with each situation that makes this book so addicting. The voices and characters are so beautifully crafted with strong voices that grow as the kids age, I did not want to let them go.

As an individual with Tourette syndrome, finding a novel with a character living with this disorder was what originally drew me to this book. I was so pleased with Spencer’s character and how Rachael Allen explained and dealt with the issues of his Tourette’s. Again as a novel that spans many years, readers were able to see how this disorder impacted his life at different stages. Like life, this is a disorder that is constantly changing.

When 14 year old Spencer Barton meets Hope Birdsong for the first time, he knows something significant has just happened. They never run out of things to talk about - from her planning adventures lal over the world to his encyclopedic (and occasionally disgusting) knowledge of weird bugs and their behavior (he has a tarantula named Lord Voldemort!). They explore the boundaries between being friends, not friends, best friends, and more than friends as they simultaneously grapple with both typical and atypical middle / high school issues: Spencer has Tourette’s which garners him more than his share of nastiness and Hope experiences a traumatic death which seems to knock the very breath from her life.

The story is told in first person from Spencer’s perspective. His humorous and yet deeply reflective voice is easy and fun to read. He likes taxonomies which help him make sense of the world and they offer an orthogonal picture of the story. Diversity is fully embraced in the recitation with some consideration of what it means to be “other” both embodied in the narrative and discussed directly at times. As an aside, some really good descriptions of what it is like to have Tourette’s, what kind of coping mechanisms can be used, and what kind of positive brain side effects might come of having it.

There are some issues with pacing - indeterminate amounts of time seem to have elapsed between chapters and although it’s not that difficult to figure out, it is a little jarring.

Good for fans of “What to Say Next” and “Words in Deep Blue”

Is there a way to understand and capture the complexities of life, friendship, and love? A Taxonomy of Love is a sweet story that captures all the magic and heartbreak of friendship and growing up.

When the new girl moves in next door, she and Spencer become strong friends. Who else but Hope could understand Spencer's love of bugs and climbing trees. Who else could understand the ways in which he is different and yet not treat him as if he is any different at all. But sometimes life is messy and not as easy to categorise as Spencer would like. Friends, more than friends, not friends at all?

A Taxonomy of Love spans seven years. Written in six parts, plus an eliplogue, this book starts when Spencer is thirteen, picks up again when he is fourteen and continues revisiting him for a chunk of time each year until he and Hope are nineteen. In this way we readers get to view the journey of Spencer and Hope's friendship, from their early teen years and their first days as friends spent climbing trees and making plans for the future, through family tragedies and other relationships, to times when they were not speaking and times when they were each other's rock. This large timespan also allows readers to watch Spencer and Hope grow up. It made me really proud to see what sort of adults they were becoming, watching how their pasts shaped them, but also how the choices they made changed them. These six parts do mean that a few things are skipped over. We don't get to witness first-hand all the major events of their lives. But this worked surprisingly well, and it was always fun to begin a new part and catch up on the events of the past year.

All the chapters are written from Spencer's point of view, however, throughout the novel Hope's perspective is shared through her journal entries and emails and texts to her older sister. These are particularly prominent during a traumatic time in her life and they help readers to understand what she is feeling and experiencing - if only poor Spencer could have had the same privilege. But misunderstandings, distance, and hurt are all part of life, as Spencer learns.

A Taxonomy of Love is about love and romance, but it is also about so much more than that. Spencer has Tourette's syndrome and his journey of understanding and accepting this, or rather, more importantly, how he sees other people accepting him, is a prominent and important part of this book. So too is his relationships with his father and with his brother. Along with the complexity of his friendship with Hope, Spencer has other friendships and relationships and the glimpses of these help us to understand Spencer and who he would like to be. Wrestling, too, becomes an important part of Spencer's life. It is all these little things that connect to make up the bigger story, one that is - at its heart - a simple but powerful journey of a young boy growing up, learning, falling in love, and accepting himself.

The publishers provided an advanced readers copy of this book for reviewing purposes. All opinions are my own.

Find more reviews, reading age guides, content advisory, and recommendations on my blog Madison's Library.

I liked this one very much, but I did get a little hung up on following the timeline and the voice occasionally. This could have been because I was reading an e-galley, which is why I didn't take any stars off. Thank you, NetGalley, for the preview copy!

4.5 stars

A Taxonomy of Love follows Spencer and Hope as they grow up. Starting at 13 years old, when they first meet. They become immediate best friends. But as time continues, life gets complicated. The two grow together and apart. This book includes a rollercoaster of feelings through sibling feuds, family tragedies, new relationships and broken hearts.

And for me, it was worth every page of reading. I also learned a lot because Spencer has Tourette's syndrome, which basically means he has these tics like shrugging and sniffing. It is just a lovely read. Spencer draws these taxonomies and they are great. Hope is also great. She has all these dreams and she has a great bond with her older sister of which we learn through their e-mails and texts.

This book also has a great, present family, as in a realistic family and an adorable, funny grandmother who is basically Spencer's second best friend. (I love Mimi).

<spoiler>The second half broke my heart when we learned about Janie's death. Especially, how it affected Hope. From the texts Hope sent when they were going to pick Janie up from the airport to the letters addressed to Janie after her death... it was just heartbreaking. I just can't imagine what it would be like to go through losing a sister. As far as my judgement can go, I think Hope's experience was well written, especially because she still has difficulty dealing with it years later.

I really liked how Spencer looked back on his liking of Hope and realised that he basically worshipped Hope when they were still in middle grade. His relationship with Jayla, probably, taught him that it is better not to put anyone on a pedestal.

I don't NOT like the misunderstanding though. I almost never do. I think they are the bane of any kind of romantic novels. I guess they are part of the deal but I prefer not to see them and if they do appear I want them to be understandable misunderstandings a la November 9 and Confess by Colleen Hoover.</spoiler>

I would definitely recommend this book if you just love YA contemporary romances.

Spencer is positive he’s met the great love of his life right before seventh grade. Hope Birdsong is mysterious, beautiful, and most of all she doesn’t make fun of his Tourettes. Unfortunately, life is never easy. Spanning the length of several year Hope and Spencer grow, change, and face challenges. Spencer tries to understand the best way he knows how, using taxonomies, but it doesn’t seem scientifically likely that Hope will ever choose him.

The use of taxonomies, journal entries, e-mails and IMs give this book a really unique edge. I love when books find different ways to tell a story. Spencer and Hope are both individuals with different friends, interests and lives outside of each other. I absolutely loved all of Hope’s musical references.

I want to touch on the lives outside of each other because I find it’s too rare in young adult literature. Romance novels often laser focus on the couple and forget to flesh out friends and family. Spencer and Hope both have a spider web of relationships both platonic and romantic throughout the novel that aren’t with each other. It makes them feel real, and it makes their love story more satisfying.

There is also the fact that this book spans over several years of their lives. It’s nice to see a love story that exists outside of the first year of meeting. That some love takes a while to find the right time. That the first love isn’t always the last, that you can date other people and still move on to true love afterwards.

Combine all this with a diverse cast that manages to teach readers about acceptance without being preachy? This is a top notch book. Seeing Spencer live with his Tourette’s Syndrome and how people treat him for it. Seeing Jayla deal with being a black girl with big dreams in a small southern town. There’s even a painfully raw depiction of grief.

There is a bit of a slow pace at the beginning of the book. One that almost made me not want to finish it, so I can’t blame people who give up near the beginning. There are also some very awkward moments that name Spencer seem like a Nice Guy (tm) but it’s clear that the author doesn’t want to support that. There’s a lot of effort put into Spencer accepting people not wanting to love him back, and that being a good friend is okay too. He makes really cringey mistakes, but by the end it feels like he has learned.

There are so many brilliant emotions and moments in this book, it does start out slow but once the pace picks up you won’t be able to put it down!

I appreciated the story and characters in this book. I obtained a free copy of this at a conference I attended earlier in the summer and was immediately drawn to the cover. And once I delved into the book, I was pleasantly surprised by the content. Well done indeed.

Can I just say that I love all of the nerdy references in this book? I don't know that it's entirely realistic, but the Magic! The Gathering references left me sending quotes to my husband. Best of all, he loved those sections and he doesn't even typically read fiction! Great nerdy coming of age story.

There's a lot that could be good about this book. Spencer, the main character, has Tourette's Syndrome, which is a nice opportunity to learn something new. Spencer learned a lot about himself and Tourette's, figuring out how to best manage it and how best to navigate through a world that doesn't understand him. Frustratingly, a lot of these realizations happen "off camera" - at a Tourette's summer camp. Spencer's best friend, Hope, also has a lot to deal with, particularly with the death of her sister to a mysterious brain tumour. This all sounds pretty good, right? Which is why it's so disheartening that it's all so BORING. I wanted to abandon this book many times, just because I was so uninvested and so disinterested in what would happen with the main characters. In spite of their extraordinary circumstances, neither Hope nor Spencer were interesting at all. By the end, I was not rooting for either of them as they finally got together. I just yawned.

A Taxonomy of Love by Rachael Allen

This book was absolutely wonderful. It’s in a slightly different branch of YA than I’m used to reading but I really loved it. My first impression was that the book was only going to be about the main characters as seventh graders, but you actually follow the characters as they get older which was so much better than I could have hoped for. I was also looking forward to reading a YA novel from a male perspective as there are very few romance/contemporary YA novels that aren’t solely from a female perspective, and this particular narrator has Tourette’s Syndrome so it’s wonderful to get the story from a perspective that I’ve never seen before. It was definitely difficult to put down.
The chapters are broken up with the narrator, Spencer’s, taxonomies and the book visits the characters in stages as they get older. What is especially interesting is that even though the narration is solely through Spencer, letters and emails from Hope to her sister are included so that at points we also get a little more insight into hope. Even though I’m a big fan of other styles of narration, I really enjoyed how this book was written and I hope that I can read more YA novels from a male character’s point of view because it’s something a little different but it was really special.
Something else which was great about this book is that we are also given information on other family members, and we get to follow the story of not only the main characters but their siblings and their friends. I haven’t read many other books in which there are supporting characters that feel like main characters too because they’re not forgotten about. In fact, they have their own relationships and feelings. As the characters get older, there are some mature themes and issues mentioned including grief, bullying, racism and mild sexual references.
The book follows the ups and downs that Spencer faces as he gets older, and how his feelings and the relationships with the people around him develop. I won’t spoil the story but I will say that this book was definitely heart-warming and it was great to read a romance story where you couldn’t really predict the ending. It felt very real because everything didn’t go perfectly, and the focus wasn’t on a single romantic relationship. The characters really developed. Spencer struggled with friendships and family relationships, as well as his Tourette’s Syndrome, and the book manages to both teach the reader about Tourette’s and show how this affects Spencer on an emotional level.
There are darker moments in the book which are so important, and they are written beautifully, but it doesn’t get too dark and upsetting. Sure, this book deals with a lot but it’s done so well that it doesn’t feel like the author is trying to throw everything in there. It feels genuine. Some things will make you smile, or make you tear up, or just take your breath away. This book is definitely worth the read, and it left me with a few thoughts: be kind, and don’t lose hope.
4.5 STARS
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher, ABRAMS Kids, for providing the copy of this book in exchange for a review, and spreading the word about this book.