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

Synopsis:

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.

Review:

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda has been sitting on my Kindle for a couple of years now and since starting up my ‘best book to screen adaptations’ series again, I wanted to check this out. I’d been wanting to watch the film for ages, mostly because I had a huge crush on Nick Robinson when I was a teen, but I wanted to read the book first.

I pretty much raced through Simon vs the Homo Sapiens agenda. It was such an easy read (in the best way) and I really loved it. It’s always great when I find myself constantly reaching for a book because I can’t get enough of it and that’s what happened here. There wasn’t anything particularly outstanding about the book, but I liked how feel-good it was at times and I’m a big fan of anonymous messaging in romance situations.

This book isn’t always sunshine and rainbows though, it’s very important I state that. It does deal with a few heavy topics, but it’s done well, so nothing is triggering. Well that I remember, I’m writing this review more than a week after finishing the book because I’m being very unorganised with reviews right now.

I’m not going to give away who Blue is, but it was pretty freaking cute. Personally, I think I’m really good at guessing twists in books, but this one was very well concealed. I did get it before the end, but for most of the book, I was convinced it was someone else.

Simon is a very likeable main character and I loved how much he enjoys music and how that was one of his main personality traits. It’s not exactly a noteworthy thing to talk about but it really reminded me of myself as a teen and that was nice.

I would definitely say this has been my favourite Becky Albertalli book so far. The characters were extremely likeable and I loved the mystery element to it. If you haven’t read Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda yet and you want a feel-good read, then I’d definitely recommend it. I wasn’t completely blown away by the story/writing, but it has become a firm favourite of mine.