Title: Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda
Author: Becky Albertalli
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Glbt
Length: 303
Rating: 4 Star
Description/Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.
With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I received an advance readers copy of this book by Penguin and I want to thank them so very much! This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up at all since the content generally doesn’t interest me all the much. I don’t mean that in a hateful kind of way or anything, its just when it comes to romance I like to be able to relate or place myself in the story in some way and since I am not interested in the same sex, nor a male, I would never have picked this book up if they had not sent it to me, and I would have missed out on what a gem of a book it really is!
I found this book and the story line to be exceptionally cute and adorable. At many points I was laughing out loud and smiling so much that my face hurt with the extra workout it was getting despite the fact it is a story about a boy who gets blackmailed and is then exposed to be gay despite the fact that it should have been his thing to decide when to come out and did everything the blackmailer wanted. I thought Simon was a very realistic character and everything that was happening to him struggle wise was relatable in some way or another. I undertsood why he made all his choices and I felt all his pains. I actually really liked him as a character and found him to be just so incredibly funny. The line about the socks just absolutely killed me.
Leah’s also into slash fanfiction, which got me curious enough to poke around the internet and find some last summer. I couldn’t believe how much there was to choose from: Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy hooking up in thousands of ways in every broom closet at Hogwarts. I found the ones with decent grammar and stayed up all night reading. It was weird couple of weeks. That was the summer I taught myself how to do laundry. There are some socks that shouldn’t be washed by your mother.
Just so damn funny.
I like pretty much all the characters. They all had their moments of enjoyments. I did think that a lot of them were seriously flawed though. I mean Nick and Leah are supposed to be his best friends but when the thing with the tumblre issue they knew about it but didn’t say anything to him about it all and they had all the opportunity to do so. I also think Leah was just very selfish about how the whole thing played out. Marty is the biggest jerk that ever did live.
I liked Blue most the time and while I cannot related to what he was going through I could still kind of understand what he was feeling. Despite that though I thought he was pretty weak. Poor Simon is going through hell and he chooses to avoid him for awhile because he was afraid of what might happen. I did really like him though and and I was really happy to see that he was who I thought he was all along.
I down point for the story I think was that it was trying to be more meaningful than it actually was. Trying to teach us things that don’t really need to be taught in this day and age. I know I cannot understand the struggles that a guy person may be going through, so I might be completely wrong and I don’t want to offend anyone, but with each generation we are becoming more and more accepting of everyone and the generation this book is aimed at is just generally pro equality. The blackmail thing is sucky and coming out is a thing that is personal to everyone who has to go through it even if they really shouldn’t anymore, but lots of people in the book make it as though being gay is still a big deal, when I think in general it isn’t. Its just more people, just like all the other people in the world. We are all different, and thats not anything bad for the most part. Specially who we choose to love.
Anyway, thats enough of my rant. I really liked this book and I am so glad that I read and I am forever thankful to Penguin who like to send me books outside of my comfort zone. Its one of my favorite things I have read this year I think.
Till Next Time…
