Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli : Book Review

Title: Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda
Author: Becky Albertalli
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Published Date: April 7th 2015
Genre: LGBTQIA, YA, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction
Page Count:320
Format: Kindle

My Rating: ★ ★ ★


Goodreads 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. 
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 My Review:

“Why is straight the default? Everyone should have to declare one way or another, and it shouldn't be this big awkward thing whether you're straight, gay, bi, or whatever. I'm just saying.”   

For me this book ended up falling flat. That could be because I was getting into a small reading slump though.

Simon is just a regular guy, he’s not out to many people he knows and he’s okay with this. Of course he’s worried about telling them, but he’s also comfortable in his masculinity and isn’t afraid to be who he is for the most part.

“But I'm tired of coming out. All I ever do is come out. I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways. I get a girlfriend. I have a beer. And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again.”

Now to having to get to becoming the wingman for the class clown, well this is what bothered me, he was literally being threatened to be outed.That’s not okay and in my opinion shouldn’t have been such a plot point.

“It's strange because in reality, I'm not the leading guy. Maybe I'm the best friend. I guess I didn't think of myself as interesting until I was interesting to Blue.”   

Overall for me not much of this story was memorable sadly. I really wanted to like and it enjoy it like everyone else did, but I just didn’t sadly. Simon had so many good points and his friends were great and extremely supportive, but it just seemed like another Contemporary high school story. I did like the mystery of who Blue was and I was always trying to figure out who he was the whole time Simon was.

Even though I didn’t love this story, I am interested in Becky’s new book coming out in 2017!