Satan Reviews- Books: Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (Aka Love, Simon) (Creekwood #1)

Becky Albertalli

Balzer + Bray

Spoilers and all that jazz.

I'm going to put it out there now I knew who Blue was before it was revealed because my copy has pictures from the film and I knew who played Blue in the film without knowing what the character's actual name. It was Bram and some people have said it was obvious and I'm like... was it? Bearing in mind I'm only good at guessing murderers in novels and formulaic American/Canadian cop shows. Which is a very specific special skill. Won't help me in my quest to find a part time job while in education though.

I think I liked this book. It was a fun read and I think I at least smiled when I read it. I don't know if it's overrated, it could just be that when I was reading it I decided to have some sort of existential crisis when I finished it. So yeah. The email part of the relationship between Simon and Blue/Bram was cute. Is it realistic? Maybe? I mean I know people can become close online because that's mostly how online dating works I guess.

Are we meant to sympathise with Martin? Because from every possible angle of looking at it, he's a fucking terrible person.
Things Martin did and then the book sort of tried to absolve him for:

1. Read another person's emails on purpose 
2. Took screenshots of this person's emails
3. Used these screenshots to blackmail this person
4. Used a person to try to force his crush into liking him
5. Outed someone to their entire school, a school known for its' opposite of progressive views towards being gay
6. After doing all of that, acting like the victim

Martin's reasons:

1. His brother was gay and his family wasn't paying attention to him????

I think I fell in love with Abby a little bit. Like she's so nice and cool and talented and if she was the protagonist, then she would seen as a Mary Sue. Just saying.

Apparently people don't like Leah, which is fair because she's just a tiny bit insufferable. But at the same time, I am basically Leah in most ways. I'm a terrible person. I've started reading Leah on the Offbeat and I relate to Leah so much it's bad.

I took too long to write this so now details are a little foggy. So I'm going to wrap it up about here.

To sum up:

• I enjoyed this book
• I actually liked the characters apart from Martin
• The book is actually pretty diverse and it "doesn't feel forced"- but I have no idea how a book about a high school with more than more not straight character and more than more not white character would feel forced because that's pretty realistic but people be like that

I gave this book a four out of five (shocking I know) because I actually liked it.