I am a mother of a teenage boy, a tall, gangly, bright guy who is destined to be the kind of guy people think of as really nice and funny and personable because he already is. This kid is going places once he’s done being an awkward teenager, much like Josh Sundquist who set out to figure out why, at age 26, he had never had a girlfriend. Josh documented his journey in his book, We Should Hang Out Sometime. I picked it up, figuring if I read it and found some useful insight in its pages, I could pass it on to a certain dude who’d like a girlfriend eventually.

Did I find great insight? Yes and no. This book won’t get my kid a date. But what it might do is give him a chuckle, a sense of not being the only one out there struggling to make a love connection, and the hope that the right thing will happen if he stays true to himself.

Would I recommend it? Sure. It’s not earth shattering, but it was a fun read.

What I liked:

• Josh Sundquist has done a lot of amazing things in his life. After losing his leg to cancer at age 9, he took up skiing and trained hard to be a world-class Paralympian. He makes a living as a motivational speaker, a job designed to inspire people to go above and beyond.
• Josh has a very easy to read writing style and a voice that makes it sound like he’s sitting down to talk just to you. Because of its nature, the story could have left me cringing in embarrassment for Josh, but instead, the tales are told in a very warm, accepting manner that had me nodding and smiling and understanding instead.
• Each girl Josh had a crush on gets her own section, a lead up couple of chapters, a hypothesis of what went wrong, and a follow-up years later that often times is enlightening.
• The little hand drawn charts are amusing and not overdone.
• There aren’t a lot of girls. I know, a funny thing to make me like the book, but the reason I picked it up in the first place was because I’m a mom thinking this guy reminded me of my…well, only a handful of girls is okay with me.

What distracted me:

• I had a funny conversation with my son over dinner. I asked him if he knew a certain kid and the reply I got was, “Yeah, he’s in my English class. He’s nice. Really nice. I mean, he’s one of those guys who is so nice you wonder if it’s possible to be that nice. But he is that nice. It’s weird.” Josh kind of strikes me as that kind of weird.
• Josh’s realization as to the root of the problem caught me off guard. I read his trials and tribulations from the viewpoint of a middle-aged woman, a mother of a teenager who has been there, done that. His mistakes, his awkwardness, his shyness, seemed age and personality appropriate. I didn’t search for a deeper cause. Now, I have no degrees or qualifications or right to say, “You’re wrong!” Far from it. I instead blame how well he wrote the book (?!). And perhaps that’s why he wrote the book the way he did. His conclusion caught him off guard as much as it did me. So perhaps I should stick with celebrating his new-found knowledge.

Final Thoughts:

• This one isn’t a must read, but it is a fun read, and one I’ll pass on to my son if he’s interested in reading a tale from the trenches.