Why We Broke Up Deals with Young Love

It's almost unfair to slap Why We Broke Up with a "young adult" label, since the novel by writer Daniel Handler and illustrator Maira Kalman will connect with anyone who has ever had an ex. And really, that's a whole lot of us.

Best known for his popular Lemony Snicket children's novels, Handler here puts away the peculiar pen name. His new novel describes what happens when young love strikes hard and fast for teenager Min Green, a young Jewish girl bewitched by old movies, and the captain of her high school basketball team, whom she meets at a party.

There's no spoiler alert needed here. We know early on she has broken up with hunky Ed Slaterton. But Min chronicles the whole affair with Ed by explaining each and every item in a box holding a collection of romantic tchotchkes she intends to drop off at Ed's place — all artistically rendered by Kalman's quirky sketches.

With the presence of third-wheel best friends and the age-old divide between the arty kids and the jock social circle, the book could easily turn into a mass of well-worn clichés — or at least a John Hughes movie. Yet Handler keeps that from happening by showing Min and Ed, their positives and negatives, even from just one person's perspective.

Min's our girl and the reader sees what she sees, but Ed has his moments, too, of being a complex guy who's not just a one-dimensional star athlete out to bed every girl at school. To him, Min's not "arty" — she's just "different" and that's not a bad thing.

She hates watching him practice basketball and his taste in music. He hates that people know he's good at math and carries around a protractor. However — for a while anyway — those differences create an interesting romance that unite these two oddly matched teens and flies in the face of any and all conventional wisdom.

Alas, the book is called Why We Broke Up. Min gives many, many reasons on why this ultimately happens — some good, some not so much — and in the end, there is a boffo one that puts you clearly on one person's side. But while she wants to part with all her symbols of their romance, many will find this book a true keeper