review by Madison Comick, age 14
Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist
Let me start off by saying this contains spoilers. You have been warned. Now that you’ve been cautioned, let me begin by stating the obvious.
If you are reading this, you can see. If sixteen-year-old, blind-since-birth Will Porter had this review in his hand, it may depend on whether or not his eyes are still working. For Will, this is perfectly normal, as he’s spent the first 16 years of his life describing things without seeing, thanks to all his years at school for the blind.
But now, he is at public school, where he humiliates himself and causes a girl to cry. But a day later, he’s back on track—he’s got friends, including the Girl Who Cried, Cecily, but he’s yet to figure out how that happened, and their friend is CONSTANTLY talking about how pretty Cecily is. A couple months later, he is offered a scientific, life-changing miracle vision. He actually obtains vision. At first, he has massive headaches and he can’t tell one thing from another, but soon, he can see, yet with some difficulties.
And then he sees Cecily, who isn’t the exact definition of beautiful ( read to find out how after 200 pages of Love and First Sight). And it’s not that Will is upset that she’s not exactly pretty, but the fact that his friends lied about it.
Now, I have A LOT of mixed feelings about this book. It takes 200 pages for him to see something for once (this was intended), and even then, he’s falling on the ground because his eyes are being pathetic. It takes around twenty more pages to figure out the truth about Cecily, and now we have around fifty or sixty more pages to see what is going to happen after this. The story started off at a good pace, but once we have fifty pages left, it feels like the story is being rushed. In less than twenty pages they go from liking each other to hating each other, and the remainder is Will convincing his friends to go on a drive to find Cecily, who ran away, so that he can confess his love to her. Romantic and all, but really unrealistic.
It also seemed as though Will and Cecily’s romance was rushed at first, but I loved it once it was stabilized. Through their relationship, Will learned that it is not about how someone looks that determines whether or not you love someone. “Not all good looking people are cool the way you are, anyway,” he says. Additionally, Cecily teaches him that everyone must see the sunset, “Just not on my forehead. It should NOT look as though the sun is setting on my forehead. Even though it does,” she tells him.
But really, I LOVED this book. It was hilarious, fast paced, and romantic—everything to love about a book. It is somewhat similar to Paper Towns by John Green (the funny friends, the drive… the fact that I kept imagining Will as Nat Woolf…..), so I would suggest Paper Towns to read if you enjoyed Love and First Sight. I also suggest listening to “She’s the Prettiest Girl in the Room, and She Can Prove it with a Solid Right Hook” by Frank Iero and the Patience while reading this. It’s the new theme song of this book. 4 stars.
Find this book in our catalog: Love and First Sight
Call Number: YA FIC SUNDQUIST,J
281 pages
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