Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Love and First Sight—Josh Sundquist

Title: Love and First Sight
Author: Josh Sundquist
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, 2017
Pages: 288 p.
Source: VOYA
Compensation: None
Read: Dec 2017

Josh Sundquist’s Love and First Sight
Will starts his first day at a new high school groping a girl on the stairs, sitting on a kid in the cafeteria, and making a fellow classmate cry just by looking at her. All in all a successful day for a sixteen-year-old blind boy who had never been in a public school. Will manages to navigate high school with his cane, his iPhone, and his ability to memorize routes once he has taken them. Navigating high school friendships turns out to be a bit trickier. Will becomes friends with the boy from the cafeteria and the girl he made cry, but when an experimental surgery gives Will eyesight he discovers that they were not as forthcoming with him as he thought. Cecily, the crying girl Will is falling in love with, has a facial birthmark that does not meet traditional standards of beauty. Will insists that what Cecily looks like really does not matter, but he feels betrayed by her and their friends for keeping it from him when he could not see it. 

Sundquist writes about Will's blindness with sensitivity. Although Will is completely incapable of seeing anything in the beginning of the story--not even shadows--he is not helpless or powerless. He is flawed, not because he cannot see with his eyes, but rather because of how he responds when he can see with them. The lesson in Love and First Sight is clear and predictable, but readers will enjoy Will's journey anyway.

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