SPOILER FREE REVIEW!
Genre: Young Adult – Contemporary
Target Audience: 14+ (contains sexual references)
Rating: B- (72%)
Goodreads Rating: 4/5
Goodreads description:
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.
I feel guilty for not loving this book like everyone else. Maybe the hype got to me. Maybe I accepted that I was going to love this novel that I didn’t consider that it wasn’t going to be as amazing as my mind was winding it up to be. Don’t get me wrong, I did like it. It was cute, and adorable and contained everything that I anticipated, it just was executed how I would have liked.
I found the start to be slower than it should have been. It wasn’t until one quarter of the way through that it started to pick up for me. I found that only one thing had happened in the duration of that quarter period. That was the blackmail that established in the first few pages. I understand needing time to build a base for your characters, but I felt that this was unnecessary. I felt like these characters could have been introduced in the same fashion in the final three quarters of this novel.
Moving on from my distaste for the first quarter, I must admit I found some of the characters to be unmistakably adorable whilst others got on my nerves a little. I found that some of them overreacted in situations and in other cases, it was just awkward, but maybe that’s just me being picky.
I love that I wasn’t able to pick the who Blue was. I love that it was a surprise. I had my suspicions, and who it ended up being was on that list, but no where near the top. I’m very pleased that Becky was able to keep the mystery for me. It made the book fun and exciting.
This book was a quick and fun read. I read it in one sitting. One, sobbing sitting. It was a good book, it’s just not a favourite of mine.
The break down of my rating:
Plot: 7/10
Characterisation: 8/10
Development: 8/10
Style & Tone: 6/10
Enjoyment Factor: 7/10
