The book follows Paul, a teenager in a city widely accepting of gay people and other queer individuals. When his school gets a new transfer student, Noah, he and Paul fall in love and being dating, while Paul works on planning the school Dowager Dance. Things between them are complicated by Paul's ex-boyfriend, Kyle, have a sexuality crisis regarding his bisexuality, and Paul's best friend the town over Tony's homophobic parents. With Noah believing Paul is cheating on him, they split up, leaving Paul to plan a way to win him back.
Boy Meets Boy was one of the first books in English accepting of gay teenagers and the simple rom-com level plot was endearing and explosively popular among queer teenagers for years after its publication.
Not to be confused with the webcomic Boy Meets Boy.
Boy Meets Boy contains examples of:
- The Beard: Tony’s parents think Joni and Paul are dating so they can still hang out with Tony despite Paul and Tony both being gay.
- Best Friend: Paul has Joni and Tony as his best platonic sidekicks on his love adventure.
- Bi-Wildered: Kyle has had relationships with both boys and girls and struggles with his identity and attractions, claiming to be either gay or entirely straight at various points of his life. However, he wishes he was either attracted solely to men or solely to women, and when Paul suggests he is bisexual, Kyle rebels against the label and refuses to claim it.
- Camp Gay: Several examples, but most relevantly, Paul, whose teachers identified him as obviously gay even from kindergarten.
- Cast Full of Gay: There are straight characters in the series—Paul's family, Noah's family, Joni...but mostly Paul is friends with other queer people and hangs out with them, so they fill the ranks of the cast.
- Character Narrator: The book is narrated in First-Person Perspective from Paul's point of view.
- Childhood Friends: Joni and Paul have known each other so long they consider each other's parents family.
- Fag Hag: Joni is best friends with Paul and Tony and is rarely seen with other friends.
- Flowers of Romance: Noah brings Paul flowers on their first date.
- Forced Out of the Closet: A variant: Tony's family finds out he's gay after discovering an issue of The Advocate, a gay magazine, in his bedroom.
- Gayngst: Tony, primarily because he's a teenager with homophobic parents. Truth in Television.
- Gift of Song: Zeke's serenade for Noah is one of these.
- Grand Romantic Gesture: Paul spends the last section of the book devoted to these, trying to make up with Noah. He ropes in all of their friends and basically every single minor and major character in the book to help him. It works.
- High School: The book is set in one and a significant number of the scenes take place there.
- High-School Dance: The Dowager's Dance is one of these, although the characters ditch it at the end to part in a cemetery instead.
- Like Brother and Sister: Joni and Paul, due to having known each other so long, and Paul being...well, gay.
- New Transfer Student: Noah just transferred to their high school as a senior before the school year started. Since the town is extremely...quirky, to say the least, Noah is not at all used to the society.
- The Quarterback: Gender inverted. The quarterback is trans girl Infinite Darlene.
- Quirky Town: The unnamed town in New Jersey Paul lives in is incredibly accepting of queer people and has a number of odd little shops and places to visit to add to the intense whimsy of the book.
- Romantic Comedy: One of the first gay rom-coms, especially in a book, especially for teenagers.
- Serenade Your Lover: Paul can't actually sing, but he has a DJ friend who can, and after listening to his love troubles, Zeke writes a custom song just to serenade Noah with.
- Shout-Out: There's a lot of these. The most memorable is the last line of the book: "And I think to myself, What a wonderful world.
- Trans Relationship Troubles: Seems to be averted. Infinite Darlene has plenty of men interested in her despite her well-known sex change and gender identity, but she doesn't really date anyone in the book.
