I read this on the airplane thinking it would be a nice, easy read and while most of it was, the ending was a bit of a shocker. The story follows a 15-year old freshman called Charlie who is a bit of an introvert. He goes to highschool and he just sits on the sidelines not really interacting with anyone. Then he makes friends with two extroverts (or they adopt him) called Sam and Patrick. They help Charlie discover friendship, give him his first love and help him navigate dating a woman and being more social.

“It’s just that I don’t want to be somebody’s crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am. And I don’t want them to carry it around inside. I want them to show me, so I can feel it too.”

The book is very much a nostalgia piece, very much relevant to the 1990’s and we get to experience Charlie through his thoughts and see what questions he might have.

“Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”

The point of the book is that friendships are important. While family can teach you many things, you can only learn about social behaviour from your peers. What is acceptable, what is not. Listening and asking questions during dating for example. Or why it’s not ok to keep silent about your sister’s boyfriend that slapped her.

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

He forms very healthy relationship with his two buddies and slowly he emerges from his shell just to have a revelation after revelation:

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won’t tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn’t change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn’t really change the fact that you have what you have.”

The last one is pretty shocking so if you’re put off by Child SA, do not finish this book (you can read about 3/4 of it no issues). Btw, it also mentions rape, drunk un-consensual encounters.