Winger by Andrew Smith

Title: Winger
Series: Winger #1
Author: Andrew Smith
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Published Date:  September 2nd 2014
Genre: Contemporary, realistic fiction, YA
Page Count: 464
Format: Paperback
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ .5

Goodreads Summary:
Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers,
and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some
happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen
apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional
balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.


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My Review:

“And then it's always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it's the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken.
And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.”

I really didn't know much about what this book was besides it was about a boy who was a rugby player. I'm not going to lie I wasn't expecting to like this book at all. But boy was I wrong. I ended up really enjoying it. In this book, for a change a teenager actually acts like a teenager, while that can be annoying at times, but Smith did a really good job of showing the main characters point of view of things so you never got too overly annoyed with him.
While Ryan is very immature you also have to remember that he is the youngest one of his friends, and while he might be super smart the majority of the decisions he makes aren't.
The only downside to the whole story to me was that for the first good half of the book I didn't really care for any of the characters. It wasn't until Ryan got to be good friends with Joey that I started to care for the book. I loved their friendship. I wish there had been more Joey, but then again I don't because I didn't want to get anymore attached to him then, I already was.

I was not expecting that ending. It has been a few days and I still can't think of anything besides heartbreaking to explain it. Just wow.