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| ★★★★★ |
Synopsis: A bright, poignant, and deeply funny autobiographical account of coming of age as an amputee cancer survivor, from Josh Sundquist: Paralympic ski racer, YouTube star, and motivational speaker.Josh Sundquist only ever had one girlfriend.For twenty-three hours. In eighth grade. Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down the girls he had tried to date and asked them straight up: What went wrong? The results of Josh's semiscientific, wholly hilarious investigation are captured here. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), to a misguided "grand gesture" at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love--or at least a girlfriend--in all the wrong places.
***
Review: Not many books actually make me laugh out loud, but this one did. I'm not usually a fan of non-fiction, but this one has an unusual premise, and given that Josh is a motivational speaker, I figured this book might prove to be entertaining, and it did. And the graphs. Oh the graphs. The stories in this book are frequently relatable, sometimes hilarious and somewhat unbelievable, and always they are accompanied by honestly spectacular graphs, many of which I could happily use as visual aids to describe my experience of life. In fact, as I have an e-copy of this book, I may do some screencapping and do just that. So much of this book had me furiously nodding my head and going 'YES! THIS!'
I was, admittedly, heavily leaning towards giving this book four stars, because I had one major criticism - Josh claims that the point of this book was to revisit old flames and interview them, to determine the cause of failure of each relationship (or lack thereof). This never really happens - in some instances he gets no reply, in most instances, he fails to direct ask any questions, and ends up deeming a lot of the answers to his unasked questions unknowable. This frustrated me, because my approach (and I have actually done this with a couple of guys) is literally to go, 'so what the hell happened? Was it me, was it you? Can you quantify my failings, please?' Although, granted, I've never gotten any straight answers either, so maybe people are just too adverse to identifying these kinds of negative features. However, the end of the book completely redeemed it. There was actually a twist! And it might be a twist that some people will see coming, but it actually caught me completely off-guard and really hit home.
Even if non-fiction isn't your thing, or motivational speaking isn't your thing, or wondering about ex-not-girlfriends isn't your thing, this is honestly a book worth reading. Even if graphs aren't your thing (you weirdo), it's hard not to get a feel-good kick out of reading this. Highly recommended.
Rating: 5/5
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