REVIEW: Winger by Andrew Smith

Winger by Andrew Smith
RATING: 2 Stars
PUBLISHER: Penguin
GENRE: YA Contemporary

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Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior 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 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.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

MY THOUGHTS:

Winger follows Ryan Dean, the imperfect protagonist who sticks out like a sore thumb in his boarding school. Although a junior, Ryan is only 14 and has just been moved to live in Opportunity Hall as a result of a previous scandal regarding a phone. At this point in the review, you're probably thinking - this is just what it says in the synopsis. Well, that's all I can say. To be perfectly honest, I thought there was nothing to this story and for a book of this size, it was really boring.

The start of the book was OK but still a bit dull. However, I presumed this was just because the author is introducing us to the setting and the characters. Therefore, I chose to stick with it. I struggled through about 250 pages of this book to only feel like I have just wasted 1 week of precious reading time. In that 250 pages, nothing and I mean nothing happens. The book is just the life of a boy at school. The usual banter with his friends, obsessing over a girl he can't have a and troubles with the jock. At this point, I really couldn't understand why the book had received the amount of hype it has already had. So, I did a bit of research and went to look for why people loved it.

Most people said that the twist near the end of the book was what made it. Going against all my book morals, I skipped to page 400 (the location of the twist). Firstly, what a waste of a book if the only reason it is good is on page 400 out of a 439 book! Once I got to this location, I thought I would struggle to follow it as I had missed many pages. I was wrong! Obviously, I was right to skip them pages as nothing had happened in them and I knew exactly what was going on. Keeping an open mind, I went into the last section of this book expecting a huge twist. Without spoiling anyone, this twist was disappointing. The event was shocking only because it was quite horrific but was very predictable and cliche. The event was skipped over as there were only 39 pages left and at the end I still felt as though I had wasted valuable time bothering with this book.

However, I cannot ignore the witty humor which is included in this book. This humor though was cast aside as I became bored. Overall, a very disappointing book with literally nothing happening in such a large book.