Book review 26 - Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Pages: 303

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Publication date: April 17, 2015

Summary: 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.

My thoughts:

"Leah's also into slash fanficiton, 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. That was the summer I taught myself how to do laundry. There are some socks that shouldn't be washed by your mom."

This book is everything in the entire world that it needed to be. Andrew Smith said "A remarkable gift of a novel" and he got it spot on with that line. I loved this book so so so much and I wish I bought it instead of getting it from the library and whenever I have some extra cash (or Christmas) I need this book asap.
The one thing I loved the absolute most about this book is how cute and happy it was. Normally when a book centres around sexuality and coming out, it tends to be really depressing. But with this book, it wasn't. It was cute and what I imagine to be (although I can't be sure) realistic and really just adorable and well handled. I am not a huge contemporary fan but man oh man this was everything I wanted. I've been in a huge slump and I really needed this book to help me out of it. 
Anyone who saw my status updates knows that I spent a really large portion of the book thinking that Blue was one specific character, which in the end was not (I kind of knew it wasn't him) but the person it ended up being made me so happy, and was my second choice since it was pretty obvious to me. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not like book to movies anymore. I'm sick of them so much and I just can't be bothered with them anymore. But this book NEEDS to become a movie. Kids and parents need to see this important story. If they cast it right with 2 actual teenage boys, this movie could have a huge impact on many many people and I am so into that idea.

I don't really want to review characters and plot because it's just so cute and I think tbh you need to read it on your own and love it without me telling you how great every aspect is, but it's really great.

Also, I was once discussing with another book reader friend I have about how books never have really realistic things mentioned in them. Like in books with long treks across land where they travel all the time, no one ever mentions needing to use the bathroom or stopping for bathroom breaks in general. Or in books like The Hunger Games or Divergent no one mentions girls having their periods and how it affects anything. Well I've also noticed that YA contemporary books never talk about masturbating, which seems unrealistic to us since it's definitely a part of a teenagers life, so my friend and I went in search of a book where it is mentioned or happens. Well I am glad to say I have finally found that in this book. It seems a bit weird to be excited about it, but this author just seemed to finally get the male POV down to perfection. 

I loved this book. It was a breath of fresh air. It's such a good representation of LGBT and actually had a really racially diverse character list so it's just really good and important please read it.