Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda -- Neeraja Nair

    “It’s a giant holy box of awkwardness, and I won’t pretend I’m looking forward to it. But it probably wouldn’t be the end of the world.” Simon Spier is a 16 year old and he is not out yet. Not a lot of guys at his school have come out and Simon doesn’t want to be seen as a “freak”. Simon, one day, found a post from an anonymous person about how the person is feeling. After reading the post, Simon told the person to email him. Ever since then, both of them have been talking to each other on email secretly. Neither of them know each other but they talk to each other so openly. 

Both of them find out that they are both gay and they want to meet each other in real life. All Simon knows is that Blue (fake name of the other person) goes to the same school as him and that they’re in the same grade. One day, Simon opens up his email on the school computer and he forgot to sign out of account. Later, someone else at school, Martin Addison, opens up the school computer and finds one of the emails.

Martin takes a screenshot of the email and blackmails Simon into getting Simon to help him talk to one of Simon’s friends that he has a crush on. Simon didn’t understand at first what Martin wanted but then he understood what was happening. “He looks at me, and it suddenly clicks. This Abby thing. This is what he wants from me. This, in exchange for not broadcasting my private fucking email.” 

I haven’t gotten too far in the book but so far it’s really interesting. While reading the book, you can understand what goes through someone’s mind while they’re trying to decide something that’s really important to them. Simon has a really hard time telling everyone his true identity because he doesn’t want to be made fun of. In Blue’s email, this is what he told Simon when he came out to his mother, “I feel like there’s a wall coming down.” Even though I couldn’t relate to this exact situation very well, I found the quote very striking. I’ve had my own “wall coming down” moment and I could relate to how the character was feeling. I also found it interesting how Blue used that phrase because I’ve never really thought about it like a wall coming down. Instead, I thought of it like crossing a line that you were always afraid to cross. 

Something else that I found really interesting was the choice of words. There’s a lot of descriptions in the book about how the characters are feeling. With the right words, I felt like I got to know the characters even more which made it easier to understand the book as a whole. In some books, there isn't enough information about the characters themselves and I find it really hard to read the book when I don’t know much about the characters. 

Another interesting thing I found was how Simon’s family acted when he was told them that he was gay. “I mean, I guess it’s about what I expected. My mom’s asking me about my feelings, Dad’s turning it into a joke, Alice is getting political, and Nora is keeping her mouth shut.” Simon says that he felt comfortable because he could predict the way his family was going to react. I was kind of surprised at how calm he seemed in that scene. I felt like if I were in his position, I would feel really uncomfortable. It was an interesting take that I had never really thought of. This quote also shows us readers how Simon developed as a character from the beginning. In the beginning, Simon was afraid to tell anyone but after he told his family, he kind of felt relieved and felt like it was the right thing to do. He also found out that it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good read. The book is really interesting and is somewhat of a romance novel.