Love and First Sight by Josh Sundquist

I was going to have this post out a week ago but I got sick with a horrible stomach bug and today's the first day since I finished this book that I've felt better. I thought I would get this out.





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?


Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

My Review:
5 out of 5

I love this book so much I don't even know where to begin.

The plot is a little cliché but luckily I love those types of books. It was cute and sweet and not generic. A little predictable but I absolutely adored it. I needed a book where everything is set right in the end.

The characters were amazing. Will is sweet and caring. He grew up blind and spent most of his time around people who are blind. Now he's decided to integrate himself into life with people with eye sight. I admire his persistence. A lot of things go wrong while at his new school, as can be expected, but he doesn't give up. He keeps going through everything that is thrown at him the entire book.

Of course he couldn't have done it without support. He has his family and even though his mom drives me nuts, she loves him and so does his father. He also has friends he made at school. Nick, Ion and Whitford. They help make the transition to the new school easier when they befriend him. Then theirs Cecily. A girl he becomes close with and eventually starts to fall in love with her.

My favorite part of the book however is the authors portrayal of seeing for the first time. I never imagined it quite like the author describes it and it's still really hard to wrap my mind around because I grew up with eye sight and it seems like something that only a person who experienced it could fully understand. And while the author grew up with eye sight he did a fantastic job explaining it in a way that made sense. He also talks about all the research he conducted for the in the Author's Note.

I overall greatly enjoyed this book and think everyone one should read it. Not only to enjoy but also to learn about blind culture and what it's like to be blind from a blind main character in a sweet, lovely and brilliant story.