A Taxonomy of Love

Overview

Rachael Allen's novel follows Spencer, a middle schooler who has spent his childhood living in his older brother's shadow and coping with the social friction of Tourette syndrome. When he meets Hope the summer before seventh grade, he finds in her the first friendship that feels entirely his own, one built on shared adventures and an easy sense of belonging.

As the two move through adolescence, Spencer, who dreams of becoming a scientist, tries to make sense of their bond the only way he knows how: by attempting to sort it into a tidy taxonomic system. But the longer he and Hope know each other, the less their connection resembles anything he can neatly label.

Family strain, personal loss, and the arrival of new romantic interests complicate the story further, pulling Spencer and Hope toward and away from each other in turns. The novel traces how their friendship bends under real life rather than breaking, and how Spencer eventually comes to accept that some relationships resist classification altogether.

Beyond the Categories

At its core, the book is less interested in resolving whether Spencer and Hope are "just friends" or something more than in examining why young people feel pressure to answer that question at all. Spencer's scientific framework gives the story a distinctive narrative device: his attempts to classify feelings mirror a broader adolescent impulse to control an uncertain world through order and definition.

The novel also folds in Spencer's experience with Tourette syndrome as a throughline rather than an isolated subplot, using his condition to shape how he is perceived by peers and family, and how that perception feeds his hunger for a friendship that asks nothing of him but honesty. Alongside this, the book handles grief and shifting family dynamics as forces that press on Spencer and Hope's relationship from the outside, testing whether their connection can hold steady while everything around it changes. Read together, these threads position the novel within a body of contemporary YA fiction more concerned with emotional ambiguity than with tidy resolution.

Why A Taxonomy of Love Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel have centered on its treatment of adolescent romantic and physical intimacy, as Spencer and Hope's relationship develops into territory that some parents and reviewing bodies have deemed inappropriate for the book's intended middle-grade-to-young-adult readership. Depictions of teenage sexuality and related content have been the recurring concern raised in formal review requests.

Some challenges have also cited the book's frank handling of family tragedy and emotional distress, arguing that its themes are too mature for younger readers who might encounter it through school or library shelving intended for a broad age range. In this catalog, the book has been the subject of 2 challenges tracked across states and districts, reflecting the narrower but persistent pattern of objection typically directed at contemporary YA titles that pair coming-of-age romance with unfiltered emotional content.