Winger By Andrew Smith

Synopsis:

Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids in the Pacific Northwest. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart

Ryan Dean West is a piece of poo through out nearly the whole book. I mean maybe 90% of the way through we finally seen character growth and I enjoyed him but that other 90% the other 400 pages was a total let down.

Okay so I’m going to start with the positives:

The last 10 page were semi okay ~~Lets just say I wasn’t rolling my eyes at everything Ryan Dean said~~
Had LGBT themes
The cartoons
Joey, Wingers gay best friend is a fantastic character and I really enjoyed him.
Some parts made me laughSo that’s the 5 things I liked about this book… I tried to think of more but honestly I couldn’t sorry for loved of this one but it wasn’t for me.
Negatives
Handled particular heavy themes ridiculously
Repetitiveness
Constant talking about how he never swears, only in his mind. There was 10+ sentences that was basically this quote: “Okay, well . . . yeah, I didn’t really say “Shut the fuck up,” because I honestly don’t cuss. But I wanted to.”
20+ sentences that were Ryan Dean calling himself a loser when he’s obviously not and he knows that. I can’t even say loser anymore It’s no long a word just strange sounds.
I honestly do cuss and Fuck you Ryan Dean you shitty friend.
Ryan Dean is mean. He is mean to the school “Bully” who doesn’t really do anything wrong
The constant talk of how hot girls are.
Repetitiveness
The constant talk of balls
The constant talk of pee
Repetitiveness oh did I already say repetitiveness? well I’ll say it again repetitiveness.
No explanations

This story is the story of Ryan Deans 11th year in a rich boarding school, him making friends, getting a girl friend and needing to pee. There are some really funny lines in this book and it is really easy to read.
I couldn’t DNF it because I felt like I was reading the equivalent of butter. Like when you accidentally turn over to day time TV and you don’t really want to watch a re-run of The Nanny again but it’s just easier to watch it then change the channel that was this book to me I flew through it.

What plot?! Did I miss it? what was the point to the story other then showing us apparently how boys minds work which is apparently just being judgmental and horny
We’re in a boarding school for rich kids that play sport and make crude and offensive jokes.

Ryan Dean contently spoke about how he was cool with Joey being gay and he had a gay best friend but being Gay wasn’t a bad thing and he could be alone with him because being gay doesn’t make you attracted to everyone.
Now don’t get me wrong I felt Ryan was good to Joey, I think Joey was the only person Ryan was actually nice too and I understand that he was really accepting I just hated him having to remind us over and over again that he wasn’t gay and that being friends with Joey didn’t make him gay because again the word of the day is REPETITION.

I simultaneously hated and really loved the ending at the same time.

The ending nearly made me bump this review to 3 stars but then I remembered how fucking annoying this kid was the other 400 pages. If you’d like to see what I thought of the ending I have spoilers on my Goodreads review.

2 out of 5 stars from me I’m afraid.

I think Andrew Smith isn’t the type of Author for me and will have to sit with Scott Westerfield and the Uglies series in my corner of un popular opinions.