Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda ~ Becky Albertalli

When Love, Simon came out last year me and Claire were beyond excited to see it. Rushing to the cinema on our break from work to watch. I absolutely loved the film. I don’t really know the exact words to explain how I feel but it just pulled on every emotion possible. Since that viewing Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli has been on my tbr list. However, I’m not quite sure why it took me so long to actually commit to reading it. So, when Claire put it on her list this year I was excited to finally devour it.

Albertalli’s coming of age novel follows Simon Spier. A sixteen-year-old who is hiding his sexuality from everyone. Well, everyone except the mysterious Blue. But when the emails between himself and Blue fall into the wrong hands he has to betray everything he knows otherwise his blackmailer will leak his biggest secret. That he’s gay. Overthinking every decision Simon has to figure out what’s the right thing without compromising his friendships, betraying himself and importantly Blue. The cutest boy he’s never actually met.

I’ll admit that I was somewhat dubious about reading this book. Having loved the film so much I was worried that it wouldn’t meet this high expectation I had built in my head. However, I was very quickly proved wrong. I couldn’t put the book down reading its entirety in practically one sitting. I fell in love with the characters all over again making me remember why I loved the film so much in the first place. This also highlighted how much hatred I had for Martin and why he thought he had the right to reveal someone’s biggest secret to the world when he hadn’t even told his family yet.

The narration flitted between the prose and inserts of the emails between Simon and Blue. This gave the book an invigorating pace which probably had a big impact on the speed of my reading. Another aspect of the book that I loved was Simon’s relationship with his family. The Spier family may not be perfect but when Simon does eventually tell his parents that he is gay they accept him with the same loving open arms they always had. This was so refreshing to read and proved that a beautiful LGBTQ+ book could be written without the clique reaction of the person being disowned by their family.

Overall, I absolutely loved Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda and gave it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ star rating. If you haven’t, I highly recommend you read this. It’s should definitely be a must-read for everyone.

M🌸