Review | Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
Published On: April 7, 2015
Published By: Penguin
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 303
Format: eBook
Source: Bought
Rating: ★★★★

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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.

To be perfectly honest, I only picked this book up in the first place because the movie trailer looked so good that I wanted to go and see the movie as soon as I could. I had very little intention of reading this book before then, for whatever reason, but I'm glad something got me interested as I ended up really enjoying it. I can definitely see what all the hype was about, it was adorable.

I absolutely adore Simon! He is probably one of my favourite main characters I have read about so far this year. He is such a great character, who felt very real and genuine. I almost felt like I could be reading about a friend, and I spent most of the book actually wanting to be Simon's friend. I just loved him a lot and could have read about him forever.

Unlike many, however, I didn't really like Simon's friends all that much. They were fine in the beginning, they seemed like genuinely nice characters who were supportive of their friend. It was as the book progressed that my dislike formed. I didn't hate any of them but they did start to annoy me and I didn't like some of the things they were doing and the way they were treating Simon at times. It was more of an annoyance than a dislike, they definitely all had their redeeming qualities.

Simon's family, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. It was nice to read such a great family dynamic. Simon's parents were very present in the story, which is often not the case in YA, and were very supportive of Simon. His siblings were great as well and I really loved the relationship they all had with each other.

This book follows the development of an online relationship between Simon and 'Blue' and I found it a great addition to the story to have some of their emails included. This gave a real insight into their relationship and allowed the reader to see the development of their friendship as it progressed to a more romantic relationship simply through their communications. It was also great for allowing the reader to get to know Blue before his true identity was revealed.

Blue's true identity added a fun element of mystery to the story. Unfortunately, I guessed Blue's identity pretty early on in the book, which was a little bit disappointing for me. I was looking forward to a big surprising reveal - and the way in which his identity was revealed would have been perfect had I not already guessed it - but it was a little anticlimactic as his identity had been pretty obvious to me for a while.

Simon and Blue's relationship was probably the best thing about this book. Their relationship, both online and eventually in real life, was completely adorable. I loved watching it develop and was rooting for them the whole way through. I just love them together! I also really loved the fact we got to see beyond the big reveal, it just made me want to keep reading about them.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I had some small issues with a couple of things that annoyed me, but nothing that took away from my overall enjoyment of the story and the fantastic main character. This book was written well and the pacing was great, I will definitely be reading more from Becky Albertalli in the future.