Andrew Smith

Younger than his classmates at a boarding school, Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team.

Winger

Two years younger than his classmates at a prestigious boarding school, fourteen-year-old Ryan Dean West grapples with living in the dorm for troublemakers, falling for his female best friend who thinks of him as just a kid, and playing wing on the Varsity rugby team with some of his frightening new dorm-mates.

Jeannette Ordas

Maybe I didn't buy that this slightly nerdy 14 year old genius was just so adorable and cute that the 2 hottest girls in his rich private school fell for him. Or maybe I'm just sick of super rich kid portrayals. It was okay.

Ryan Dean West's life is complicated. He's a student at Pine Mountain, a boarding school for rich kids. He's sharing a room with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he's totally in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little kid. With the help of his mates and his talent for doodling comics, Ryan Dean is trying his best to get a handle on school, life and rugby. But when the unthinkable happens he has to find a way to hold on to the important things - no matter what. Hilarious and heartbreaking, Wingeris a coming-of-age story for the twenty-first century.

aisha

jess

** spoiler alert **
           ok. ok oh my god. so i'm cruising along this book and it's fucking hilarious see, i usually don't really laugh out loud but i definitely did. and i was like wow! this is a really good book about a boarding school! 

i mean, god, the characters were so full of life. ryan dean was hilarious. totally 14-year-old boy, but hilarious all the same. it was annoying how he treated the girls and kinda gross but it was also pretty in character and hilarious, and it was kinda weird how so many sixteen year olds liked ryan dean and the characters were great and hilarious without being caricatures. one thing i found really irritating is how ryan dean mentioned joey was gay in literally every scene.

but. oh my god. THE ENDING. i started having a feeling something bad was going to happen which is weird because it was a comedy you know and then the ending happened and i fucking bawled. jesus. okay so this was a really good book. wow. wow.

Sarahi Flores

Even though Ryan Dean thought of himself a loser, he was basically a cool loser.
those embarrassing moments where funny moments and he manage to play it cool.
I couldn't top laughing at some of those moments. But also the ending was pretty sad. I even cried.

Helene Utterback

This book is not a book I would generally pick up on my own, and for about the first one hundred pages all I could think was "This is not my kind of book." But by the end, I was invested in the characters and the relationships. The protagonist irritated me from the beginning, but I like having a protagonist who challenges my perceptions. But the protagonist was also my only problem with this book; I couldn't connect with him as a character as much as I wanted to. This book is so much more complex than it appears, and I was truly emotional at the way it ended.

Emi Gilmore 

Urgh idk why I reread this book. It breaks my heart into a million pieces

Amanda Kordeliski

Quite possibly the best book I have read this year. Top 3 without a doubt.

Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old boy at a boarding school for rich kids. 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 humour, 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. Filled with hand-drawn illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen's experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking. - Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2013 - Amazon's Top 20 YA Books of 2013 - Publishers Weekly Top 10 Summer Reads of 2013 - ALA/YALSA nominee for "Best Fiction for Young Adults 2014" - 2014 Rainbow List Nominee Andrew Smith knew ever since his days as editor of his high school newspaper that he wanted to be a writer. After graduating college, he experimented with journalistic careers - writing for newspapers and radio stations - but found it wasn't the kind of writing he'd dreamed about doing. Andrew Smith has always wanted to be a writer. After graduating college, he wrote for newspapers and radio stations, but found it wasn't the kind of writing he'd dreamed about doing. Born with an impulse to travel, Smith, the son of an immigrant, bounced around the world and from job to job, before settling down in Southern California. There, he got his first 'real job', as a teacher in an alternative educational program for at-risk teens, married, and moved to a rural mountain location where he lives with his wife, two children, two horses, three dogs, three cats and one irritable lizard named Leo.

Flavia Louise

4.5 stars

I'd heard of this book but never really had the biggest interest in reading it since there are just so many books to be read. But then it popped up on RivetedLit and I knew that I really would like to read it especially since it is over 500 pages in their edition making it eligible as a book for the Tome Topple Readathon that I am kind of taking part in right now.

I am very happy that I read this book. I really love the boarding school setting and the realness of the relationships. It is so funny and fun at times but also suceeded at thouroughly devastating me.

Also: This is the 100th book I finished this year.... :o

Elena Garcia Navarro

DNFed at 62%

I cannot read one more page of this book. This is going to be a rant review with spoilers, you've been warned. 

This has turned out to be what I could probably count as my most dissapointed read of the year. I was kind of excited about it, 'cause I like the books that circle around an sport and the players interactions but rugby has next to no importance in the novel. 

Things that I hated about this book: 

1. First of all, we follow a fourteen year old (Ryan Dean, for starters I hate when main characters have two names and the whole times they are called by both of them, anyway) living in a boarding school called Pine Mountain. Because he is so super mega clever (which we don't get any hints judging his behaviour and interactions), he got to skip two years and is currenly sharing rooms and classes with a bunch of 16 years olds. He is in love with his best friend (who is super hot and surprise surprise is also into him). Let's be honest.. which girl surrounded by boys of her same age (who all happen to play rugby so they are fit af) would be into a guy two years younger? But wait, the other mega hot girl in his year (Megan) decides to cheat on his bf (and our protagonist's roomate) in order to make out with our protagonist around the school corridors. Is this plausible in any way? 

2. There is one of the team players, Joey (and the only sensible and not-so-caricaturized-character-that-I-wanna-roll-my-eyes-at-him-the-whole-time) that is gay. You would think the novel is set in the 1800 by the number of times it is mentioned that he is gay. Every time he appears the author feels the need to remind you he is gay, in case you had forgotten. Ryan Dean, describes himself as totally open-minded towards homosexuality. Guess what. HE IS NOT. Some examples are: in a moment he ends up alone in the changing room with Joey and the first thing that pops into his mind is "now it must be wear if I change my clothes in front of a gay guy" or the following dialogue, extracted from the book: 

“Okay,” Joey said. “I timed it and everything. It was at least a minute and a half. That’s not kissing. You’re right. It’s making out. It’s practically having sex in public.” 
I wanted to high-five Joey so bad, my hand was twitching. 
What a fucking awesome thing to say, especially coming from a gay guy."

SERIOUSLY...

3. If I got a euro every time Ryan Dean says he is such a loser I would be as rich as the queen of England. 

4. The book is written very simplistic and apart from the characters having the depth of a street puddle, there is not any improvement in them as the novel progresses.. (and I am past the half-point). 

I could continue enumerating things that i didn't like about it, like the fact that there is not one girl that is not sexualized and objectified in terms of "hotness".

If your are a horny 14 year old with a fondness for sports, go ahead and read the book. Otherwise I would stay clear from it. WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE

Cameron Austin

Jelke Lenaerts

A funny, lighthearted story with a very hard hitting and impactfull ending.

Olivia Koonce 

Roberta Dee

I don't think I laughed out loud and cried more in one book than this one in a while. The character development is real and not over done. I fell in love with the main character, Ryan Dean. His heart-wrenchingly honest confession of boarding school is poignant without the fluff of a typical YA novel. Great writing from Andrew Smith.

Elad Schulman

 Bruna Acioly Leão

2.5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it was enjoyable to read: the writing flows well and quickly, there is not technically wrong with it. You can't deny that Smith knows how to write, knows how to engage the reader in a story. Also, it's contemporary YA, so it is easy to read.
It's not just shallow easy to follow writing however. There were some moments that genuinely made me laugh and admire the sentiment of what was being said. 

 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.

The book is about growing up, and Ryan Dean is very young and immature, but at the same time he has his heart on the right place and I get the sense that he is someone who truly cared for his friends, and that just needs to sort out a few things in his life. 

"You push things too far, sometimes, Ryan Dean. Just your luck."
"I know."
"But, shit, everyone knows you're a fighter. You are not afraid to take on anyone." Joey said.
"Oh, I'm afraid. But when you have to fight, you have to fight. There's nothing else you can do." 

However, despite being compelled by the writing and the story, I cannot condone this book's treatment of female and of queer characters. They are used as plot devices and serve only to fuel the white straight male character in his journey towards being a better person. Those characters are denied their own narrative, in order to serve a purpose in the narrative of the main character.

It doesn't just happen with the two main females (Megan and Annie who are for whatever reason both in love with Ryan Dean and who seem to have no life of their own) or with the main gay character (Joey, who is Ryan Dean's best friend, is incredibly smart and sweet and who had potential to be a truly great character if it wasn't for (view spoiler)[his death at the end of the novel, which was honestly a completely cheap plot device, and highly unnecessary. Ryan Dean had already grown and was making amends for his wrong doings, there was no point in using Joey to accelerate RD's narrative - it was just for emotional impact and to give a sense of higher meaning for the book, and frankly I think that is low and stupid (hide spoiler)])

Every other secondary character other than the ones I mentioned get underdeveloped, but while in some cases that is to be expected (there isn't room in the novel for everyone to grow, after all), some of these characters were central in the story and they all deserved better.

On a more superficial note, I also have zero interest in sport details (though I did not mind the bloody fights), and boys talking about their body parts and fluids all of the time. But that is a personal thing. I have an aversion to everything that is too "boyish", my own issues with toxic masculinity, I guess, and also my belief that being a girl is infinitely superior to being a boy - sorry, this is my six year old self writing this, but that is how mature some of the comments and jokes were, so...

I can't deny that I enjoyed reading the novel while I was in it, but I can't say that I agree with how things were handled and in the end and it left me feeling bitter about the whole thing.

Farah Khaled 

This book was so light and fluffy that I didnt ever expect that ending. I was so heartbroken and close to tears. So glad I read it.

Winger

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