Elijah is a polite slacker surfing out of high school on an easy wave of quirky friends and directionless good vibes. His older brother Danny is a rising junior advertising executive fueled by twentysomething ambition, caffeine, and an almost total lack of a personal life. Good friends in childhood, they're now two brothers who quietly torment each other with their differences and incompatibilities. Each has defined himself against the other, and neither remembers how to get back the bond they once shared. Levithan fills this teen novel with the images and textures of Italy, and he creates two immediately familiar and identifiable characters in Danny and Elijah. The author strikes a nicely subtle balance: reading the book, you begin to root for them but also to understand why they've become estranged. 

Are We There Yet? isn't only about sibling rivalry, though; it also touches on one of the great unspoken perils of growing up: you might just find yourself alone. Family, friendship, love - the sustaining presences at the heart of a life - can get edged out by the daily dailies, the e-mails, the applications and itineraries. Sometimes, you have to lose yourself to find yourself: go to Italy, wander the streets of Venice, make mistakes that remind you what 'right' feels like for you. 

Levithan is a funny, engaging writer, and this book will interest anyone who ever had - or wanted - a sibling. It's also a great bit of propaganda to instill in teens a desire to travel. 

The book contains minor mention of drug use and very mild allusions to sex. Recommended for readers aged 14 and older. 

Review by Mark David Bradshaw October 14, 2005 

For a review of David Levithan's teen novel Boy Meets Boy, check: http://www.watermarkbooks.com/review1005-006.html