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BOOK REVIEW: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

April 7, 2015

cover simonBook Review

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Becky Albertalli

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 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 and slowly falling in love with, will be compromised.

More info on the author’s website here: 

Becky Albertalli has given us a very real and sympathetic story of a young man and the ways social media and the internet impact and intersects with younger LGBTQ lives (and all our lives now). She shows us the trauma that this can generate but also the ways in which the empowerment of the web and the mastery of it’s ways , can allow individuals of character and intelligence to take back the agenda and spin it up to suit what and who they are, it’s a refreshing and clever book and an easy read too. The narrative thrust is believeable and engaging and Albertalli’s prose is warm, she likes these characters and I really liked Simon as a character and felt for him as he marks out his own boundaries and defines things on his own term. He grapples with love, self-doubt and the realisation that he can be whatever he likes, it’s a wonderfully life affirming journey and made me smile a lot. There’s so much love in the book it’s a joy to read.

This is a great book for a younger LGBTQ reader, but also a book worth reading for anyone with an interest in a positive and warm coming-out story which is full of heart, emotional  intelligence and just good old fashioned plain common sense and more than a touch of clever sly humor too.

This is magnificently funny and touching in equal measure, and so refreshing to have a young LGBTQ book that’s not riddled with tragedy or shadowed with doubt. With a bright enquiring and loving intelligent and geeky queer character at the heart of the narrative this coming-of-age, coming out story this is a splendid first novel from Becky Albertalli.

 Highly recommended

 For more info or to buy the book see the publisher’s website here:

Out now £12.15

 

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