We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh SundquistPublisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: December 23rd, 2014
A bright, poignant, and deeply funny autobiographical account of coming of age as an amputee cancer survivor, from Josh Sundquist: Paralympic ski racer, YouTube star, and motivational speaker.Disclaimer: I received an eARC via NetGalley. This did not affect my review in any way, nor am I being compensated for this.
Josh Sundquist only ever had one girlfriend.
For twenty-three hours.
In eighth grade.
Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down the girls he had tried to date and asked them straight up: What went wrong?
The results of Josh's semiscientific, wholly hilarious investigation are captured here. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), to a misguided "grand gesture" at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love--or at least a girlfriend--in all the wrong places.
I was originally interested in this book because I have never been in a romantic relationship, and I thought this book would offer at least a little of insight as to why that might be. Or rather, why it was like that for someone else. I also heard that Josh is hilarious, and I was interested to see what he had to say on the matter.
Perhaps my favorite part was all the diagrams and the various other ways he presented information outside of the normal text. These portions were amongst the most hilarious and often presented information that wouldn't have been as funny in text form. Josh's writing itself is pretty straightforward and blunt, which I enjoyed. However, as funny as parts of it were, I think I was expecting much more humor, and I only got a little bit of that.
Something else I had a problem with was the way the book was the way he split up his stories, making them seem like scientific experiments. I guess I could understand why he made the decision to split up the stories and girls in that way, but it bothered me a bit. Not only were some sections clearly weaker than others, but it made it seem as though females can be understood in this scientific way rather than understanding their complexities.
I do think that he did a pretty good job of exploring his thoughts on the reason he hadn't been in a romantic relationship before. For the most part, he kept me interested. But it was pretty clear what his real message was--probably similar to the message he gives at various speaker events. I didn't necessarily have a problem with this, but at times, it was a bit overwhelming and so obvious, and I was hoping it wouldn't be. I did appreciate his message though, and I think it's an important one which I connected to it a lot. He seems awkward the way I am, but it's important to see how self-worth and acceptance may be a huge part of this and can at least be a huge first step.
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