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From award-winning, bestselling author David Levithan and beloved, acclaimed singer-songwriter Jens Lekman comes a charming, tender novel about an unlucky-in-love wedding singer trying to find the right words to save his relationship.
J is an accidental wedding singer. Unlike most wedding singers, he writes an original song for every couple—his way of finding out about the small, strange things that brought them together and the hopeful, vulnerable feelings they're experiencing.
J's own love life is in a state of flux. His girlfriend is off to New York for work, and as her life grows bigger and busier without him in it, he finds it harder to stick to a happy tune. He doesn't know whether to encourage the soon-to-be-wed couples or warn them.
When complications hit and love is tested, is there any way to sing through all the noise?
Combining David Levithan's deeply observant storytelling and Jens Lekman's inventive and touching original songs, Songs for Other People's Weddings is a tender, honest novel that tracks love through all its chord changes, never forgetting that the best songs contain the bitter and the sweet, the despair of losing it all and the euphoria of being found.
"The concept is immensely clever ... Much like a good love song, this story demands to be felt." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An accomplished novel...Levithan's heartfelt prose and Lekman's songs for each of the novel's 10 weddings offer genuine and often funny depictions of love's messiness. It adds up to an impressive meditation on love and letting go." ―Publishers Weekly
"Consider me David Levithan and Jens Lekman's new number one groupie. Songs for Other People's Weddings is a hilarious, heartfelt, and tremendously wise exploration of love in all its beguiling and bittersweet absurdity. And like the best kind of pop songs, you'll still be thinking about it long after it's done." ―Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding
"The very best prose has a certain lyricism, so perhaps the pairing of a novelist and a songwriter seems obvious. The love story they create, however, is anything but. It's surprising, funny, compassionate—it's not just lyrical, it sings." ―Steven Rowley, New York Times bestselling author of The Celebrants and The Guncle
This information about Songs for Other People's Weddings was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Beth Levithan
When not writing during spare hours on weekends, David Levithan is editorial director at Scholastic and the founding editor of the PUSH imprint, which is devoted to finding new voices and new authors in teen literature. His acclaimed novels Boy Meets Boy and The Realm of Possibility started as stories he wrote for his friends for Valentine's Day (something he's done for the past 22 years and counting) that turned themselves into teen novels. He's often asked if the book is a work of fantasy or a work of reality, and the answer is right down the middle—it's about where we're going, and where we should be.
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