Winger (Winger)

by Andrew Smith.

[readingwithwrin]

3.5

"And then it's always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it's the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken.
And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.”

I really didn't know much about what this book was besides it was about a boy who was a rugby player. I'm not going to lie I wasn't expecting to like this book at all. But boy was I wrong. I ended up really enjoying it. In this book, for a change a teenager actually acts like a teenager, while that can be annoying at times, but Smith did a really good job of showing the main characters point of view of things so you never got too overly annoyed with him.
While Ryan is very immature you also have to remember that he is the youngest one of his friends, and while he might be super smart the majority of the decisions he makes aren't.
The only downside to the whole story to me was that for the first good half of the book I didn't really care for any of the characters. It wasn't until Ryan got to be good friends with Joey that I started to care for the book. I loved their friendship. I wish there had been more Joey, but then again I don't because I didn't want to get anymore attached to him then, I already was.

I was not expecting that ending. It has been a few days and I still can't think of anything besides heartbreaking to explain it. Just wow.

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