Simon vs The Homo Sapien Agenda

The Blurb of the Book

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: if he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing, will be compromised.

With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends, and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now, change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out—without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

My Thoughts During the Book

53.0%”Simon and Blue are my life, but also idiots, but mostly my life”

66.0%”OhmyGod Simon. SIMON. I am so sad for you, but so so excited to see where this goes”

84.0%”Martin, get out. Abby, stop it. Leah, also stop it, but to a lesser extent”

100.0%”Plot twist! I didn’t expect it to be him, I had loads of theories that weren’t him. I kind of wish I could have worked it out, but I’m happy with who it ended up being”

My (more coherent) Thoughts After the Book

Ahh, this book. Oh, how I loved this book!

Let’s talk about the most important thing; the romance. Everything Blue and Simon say to each other is cute and perfect and adorable. Yes, it’s done online, and that’s potentially annoying for some readers. For me, though, it was fantastic. I think they made a really great, genuine connection, even if they didn’t meet for such a long time. And I think that just proves how important it is to find things you have in common with someone more than liking what they look like, which is such an important message.

It wasn’t all focused around these two, though. We did have a really great cast of supporting characters. I liked that there was a running conflict between Leah and Abby (and also sort of Nick). It wasn’t relevant to the romance side of the plot, but it added to the realism of the book, as well as making sure we weren’t totally bombarded by romance all the time. We got to see both the girls develop really well as well, which I enjoyed. When a romance is just a romance, it can get really boring. Abby made the coming out process so much easier for Simon, which I really appreciated. Oh, and we can’t forget his family! His family reminded me of mine; involved in my life, but maybe a bit too involved… 

The thing that annoyed me the most was Blue’s lack of enthusiasm to meet. If my online friends lived that close to me, I would be with them every hour of the day! I understood that Blue was shy, but obviously Simon wasn’t someone who was going to judge him, particularly before Blue found out who he actually was. It let the book down a little bit for me, because I couldn’t get that quite important aspect to make sense in my head.

And yes, the ending worked really well. I was surprised, although there was one clue in there that had me thinking I knew who it was. I had a theory on who I thought it was, and I was fully convinced throughout the entire book that it was this character, so that made it impossible for me to even consider the possibility of it being someone else. That’s what makes the book so good though. You don’t guess it, and even if you do work it out, there are really no clues towards who it could be until you find out at the very end. I love a mystery type romance like that.

Overall, I’m so happy I’ve finally read this book! I absolutely adored it, and I would really recommend it for the hopeless romantics out there