Review: Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist

Title: Love and First Sight

Author: Josh Sundquist

Publisher: Brown Books for Young Readers

Publishing Date: January 3rd, 2017 

Pages: 281
Audio Length: 6 Hours and 25 Minutes

Genre: YA Contemporary
TW: N/A

Series: Standalone

Source: Audio

 

Love is more than meets the eye.
On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?
As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?

What made me pick this book up:
Jenn had it on audio and I had previously read "We Should Hang Out Sometime" by him and really enjoyed it. So I figured I'd check this one out too.

What did I like about the cover:
I really like the colors. But that's about it. I know it's supposed to be simple and all, and it's cute. But I would have liked to see a little more. 

What made me read this book:
I needed it for a challenge, I don't remember which one now because this was a month ago. Oops. Anyway. Like I said above I had read his other book and decided this one might be good too. 

What did I like the most:
I absolutely loved this book. Almost everything. Just about everything.

Let's start with the characters. 
Will was just okay. I understand he's had a hard life with being blind since birth, and he has a lot of expectations about this experimental surgery. And I respect him for the most part. He has had it hard. If I was blind I don't know what I'd do. So for the most part he was likable. Except for what I'll mention below I didn't have anything against him.

Cecily. I love Cecily. She's very sweet and I see a lot of me in her. She's shy, self conscious, smart, and a photographer. She spends most of her time behind a camera. 

I love his new friends, they're super geeky and have a good sense of humor.

I also love his parents. They seem like they really want what's best for Will, even if they are a little... naive? I guess. They try too hard sometimes and treat him like he's fragile. 
And that's something I really like is through the book you can see how his mom grows into understanding who he is and allowing him to be more independent. By the end of the book you're like wow she really great. 

The pace is done well, it's fast paced and a short quick read, but it really packs a punch I think. Even with it being short it has a lot in it that I feel is really important. 

The humor in this is amazing. It's a really dry and self deprecating humor just like his NF book is. You can tell it's the same author the whole book.

I felt really happy while reading this book. I was rooting for Will and rooting for Will and Cecily together. 

What didn't I like:
At one point he gets mad at his friend for not telling him about something. Something that shouldn't be a big deal but he makes this HUGE deal out of it. He acts like it was a personal attack against him. I just find it really petty, immature, and super annoying. I kept thinking dude just get over it the whole time.

He acts like he doesn't want people to treat him differently or that he can do all this stuff even though he's blind, and that's great. Except that at the same time he throws fits a lot and acts like people should treat him differently because he's blind. It feels like he wants it both ways and that just can't happen. 

But that's really it. 

Oh and in the synopsis it says that his friends lied to get them together and that's not really what happens. 

Would I read the rest of the series/more from this author?
Yepp. 


Overall this book was awesome. Great humor, good characters, good pace. 

“You know what friendship means? It means sharing the burden. You didn't have to carry it all by yourself.”
― Josh Sundquist, Love and First Sight

JOSH SUNDQUIST is a Paralympian, author, motivational speaker, and Halloween enthusiast.