Review: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Being a teenager is hard. Being a teenage boy who is gay but hasn't told anyone yet? That's way harder. It's not that Simon is ashamed of being gay - he just doesn't know how to tell anyone. No one who is straight has to make a huge announcement, so Simon doesn't have anything to go off of to make a public spiel about it.

When a classmate, Martin, sees his emails that he writes to Blue, another fellow gay person, and blackmails him into trying to set him up with his friend, Abby, Simon is forced to realize that he is stuck in a really terrible place. Blue is very personal and private, so Simon doesn't tell him that someone else knows they are talking to one another. And Simon doesn't like being blackmailed, so he isn't trying very hard to hook Martin up with Abby.

Plus, it seems that Abby might be interested in Simon's friend, Nick, which makes his other friend, Leah, made because she likes Nick as well... Again, being a teenager is hard.

The more Simon talks to Blue via email, the more he wants to meet him in person. Because he is falling for this person, and hard, but he has never seen him nor does he know who it is. Not even an inkling.

When Simon's secret gets told to everyone on the internet, he has to tell his family and friends and suffer the insufferable immature classmates who give him crap about him liking guys. And because Blue is so secretive, Simon is worried that Blue will stop talking to him.

Simon's life is about to change - and Simon is going to have to figure out how to deal with all of these changes - both good and bad. And some things might not go as he wanted...

Okay, I'm one of those people who got this book because there is a movie coming out in March 2018 and it looks hilarious and I had to read the book to see how good/bad the movie is compared to the book. And the funny thing is that I have read "The Upside to Unrequited", which is a spin off where Simon and Blue show up in that book, and yet I've read them out of order.

And I'm so ashamed to say that I didn't read this when it came out, because I loved it! It is such a great novel! I love the questions that Simon asked, such as how come homosexuals have to come out and why it's such a big deal to be gay instead of straight. And the way that he had to listen to his father make fun of gays his whole life would make it extremely hard to come out to his family.

I loved how this book, while it talked about gays and homosexuality, also showed that Simon was a normal teenager and lived a normal life. He was in theater, had awesome friends, got annoyed with his siblings, had a crazy unusual family (which I thought was AWESOME!), and had a crush. It shouldn't matter if that crush was for a boy instead of a girl, but sadly when everyone found out, they became jerks.

Simon is extremely brave for everything that he went through, and he was still proud of who he was. He didn't let the pettiness and terrible things change his mind and play it off as a joke so they would leave him alone. And that is awesome.

He was also pretty set on how much he liked Blue, and I'm pretty impressed because most people aren't even sure when they meet people in real life.

I can't even express how much I loved this book and how much I love Simon. I am so glad that I finally got a chance to read this book. And I am very excited to see the movie next month! I hope it depicts the book as well it should because if they mess it up, I'm going to be pretty angry!

I am definitely going to be recommending this to my friends!

View all my reviews