Series: standalone
Author: Josh Standquist
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release Date: January 3, 2017
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Told: First Person (Will), Present Tense
Content Rating: Teen (brief innuendo and kissing)
Format Read: ARC (trade)
Find On: Goodreads
Purchase On: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository
Summary:
Love is more than meets the eye.
On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?
As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life. But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?
* * *
Love and First Sight was a lighthearted thinker that really got me pondering sight and how most of us take it for granted. Born with sight, we just see things and don't even consider how complex it all is - the colors, shapes, textures, layers. It all forms a clear picture in our mind, but imagine if you had to train your brain to recognize a triangle or the color red when you've never seen it before. When you've never seen anything before.
That's what Love and First Sight was about: a teen boy, blind since birth, who gets a rare chance to finally see and has to re-train his brain to recognize the foreign sense and process the information it supplies. It was fascinating to follow his progress - the author did his homework (his Author's Note attests to it), and while he does admit to taking a few liberties given a lack of actual case studies, Will's journey felt real and made me start to look at my own sight in a whole new way.
As a story, the engaging subject, easy writing style, and great characters made it an engrossing read that I couldn't put down and finished in two days. Although the second half felt rushed to cram in a lot of big stuff (the surgery, emotional visual transition, a road trip), I liked that the first half took the time to not only introduce the characters and their relationships but really show us what life was like for Will and how he coped. I even wish there had been more non-visual description from his other four senses to really immerse us in what and how he perceived the world. I really liked Will and the way he "viewed" his surroundings - unable to judge anything but most especially others by the way they looked, he had no visual preconceptions, and even after gaining his sight he only looked for the beauty in everything. His friends were a fun, supportive bunch that added good humor and dialogue, and sweet Cecily was really great for Will - and he for her. Their story was an entertaining and educational one, and I'm really glad I gave it a read.
Conclusion: A quick, sweet and thought-provoking story. Highly recommend for everyone, especially if you enjoy light contemporary romances.
Scribble Rating:
4.5 of 5 Scribbles
