Winger by Andrew Smith

“Joey told me nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was, that things expand and contract- like breathing, but you could never fill your lungs up with the same air twice.”  

 

Title: Winger
Author: Andrew Smith
Pages: 439

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.

My Rating:✰✰✰3/4

I like to call books like this, books with things just happening. As in, there is no build up plot or anything like that. That doesn't mean that this book was bad, it just meant that it was too easy to put down. I do not think it was the book, but just because I haven't been able to read that much recently. And so, I was very disconnected with reading just in general.

I picked up this book because many people seemed to like it and it was compared to Looking for Alaska because of the boarding school elements. This book was much more different than anything I've read before.
I did like how there were illustrations in the book which helped me picture everything more. It added a more comical mood.

This is also a type of book that is hard to review because I do not have much to say about. Ryan Dean West was a very interesting character with very complicated thoughts. All of the characters in this book were weird, but not in a bad way. They all had their own thing which made them distinctive which was good although they were not my favorite group of people. It's hard to find a book realistic if you've haven't experienced it before. So to me, this book was not realistic because I've never been in a boarding school. But one thing I did like was how there were flaws and development present. Some of the development might not have been positive, but there was change.

This book was not very easy to read, but I am not sure why. I think there was just a lot of content going on and it was interesting, but I didn't have any connections with it. At some parts I felt like I wasn't really reading the book but looking at the words, but this book was not bad.

I do not have much to say about it, other than on what happened in the end:

SPOILERS ON ENDING:
Going into this book, I did know that the ending was going to be sad, so I was anticipating it. So when I was past half way through the book, I kept predicting what it was going to be and bracing myself for it which took away from the enjoyment slightly. To me, Joey was probably the best character in this book. He was kind, relaxed, and calm. When they mentioned his disappearance, I had a feeling he had died, but I thought he was going to commit suicide. Reading that short chapter description of him being stripped down, tied against a tree and beat, made me insanely sad, and angry at the two people who did it. I couldn't even think about how sad Ryan must've felt because they had such a great friendship.

There is a sequel coming out and I am planning on reading just to see how things change in his senior year.