Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Overview

Naomi and Ely grew up sharing a floor in the same Manhattan building, and over the years their friendship hardened into something closer to a shared identity. To guard against the one thing that could wreck it, they drew up a no-kiss list: a running inventory of people neither of them is allowed to pursue, Naomi's crush on Ely included. It is a rule meant to keep the friendship intact by keeping romance out of it.

The arrangement works until it doesn't. A kiss between Ely and Naomi's boyfriend breaks the pact in the worst possible way, and the fallout exposes how much the two friends have been managing around each other rather than being honest with each other.

Told from both of their perspectives, along with the voices of the people orbiting them, the novel follows Naomi and Ely as they separately stumble toward other relationships while trying to figure out whether their friendship can survive being this honest.

A Friendship Built Like a Romance

Cohn and David Levithan, writing in alternating voices, use Naomi and Ely's bond to ask a question many coming-of-age stories sidestep: what happens when a friendship carries all the weight, exclusivity, and jealousy usually reserved for romantic love? The no-kiss list is less a quirky plot device than a diagnosis — two people have built a relationship so central to their identities that any outside attachment feels like a threat to be contained by rule rather than trust.

The book sits alongside the authors' other collaborative and individual work in its interest in young people figuring out identity and attachment on their own terms, outside the scripts adults hand them. Its structure, split between two first-person narrators and widened further by supporting voices, mirrors its theme: no single perspective is allowed to dominate the story of what this friendship actually is. Critical and reader response has tended to focus on its frank, funny treatment of teenage relationships and its matter-of-fact inclusion of a gay male protagonist navigating crushes and heartbreak alongside his straight best friend, without treating either experience as the exceptional one.

Why Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List Has Been Challenged

A gum-related scene played for shock and comedy, along with frank talk about kissing, crushes, and who's attracted to whom, has drawn the most attention from challengers, who object to the book's casual, unembarrassed way of discussing teenage sexuality. Because Ely's storyline follows his pursuit of boys with the same openness given to Naomi's pursuit of a boyfriend, some objectors have specifically flagged the gay content as inappropriate for teen readers, treating the dual narration as reason enough to restrict the book rather than evidence of its evenhandedness. Language used throughout the dialogue has also been cited as unsuitable for the age group the book is shelved for. Within this catalog, the novel has been documented as challenged in 1 state and 6 districts, with objections clustering around its sexual content and its portrayal of a gay teenage character.