Children's booksChildren's books This article is more than 7 years old

Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom – review

This article is more than 7 years old

‘it was a phenomenal reading experience that I’ve never experienced before’

Parker Grant is your normal high school student – she does well in school, she has awesome friends, she has a few crushes here and there. The only thing that makes her different is that she’s blind. Parker hates the fact that it makes her ‘different’, hates how people treat her differently and get scared when she tries to do things by herself because Parker’s taught herself to be able to do most of life’s necessities even whilst blind but yet people refuse her help and don’t let her do the things that she is perfectly capable of doing because other people are scared of what might happen. Especially when it comes to running. Parker loves to run but she always does it in an obscure location because she’s scared everyone will come and watch her run - even though she’s just a normal person running, there’s something different about seeing a blind girl run. And then of course there’s Scott, Parker’s ex-boyfriend from when she was 13 who moved schools after doing a terrible thing to Parker, but now he’s back.

When I got this book I didn’t read it straight away because I was busy reading another book at the time but even whilst reading that book my eyes always glanced up at this book because I was so excited to read it, I thought it sounded really good! One of the reasons I was interested in reading this book is because I was curious as to how someone would write a book in first person that was based on a blind person, not because I think it would be impossible but because there is so much visual description in books and I don’t think I even properly realised until I considered a book that couldn’t have visual description and I wondered what would be used to fill the space. And just as I thought, it was really interesting! And something that I thought was really special was after I’d finished reading the book I realised that when I was reading the book there were only a few things that I visualised in my head; thinking back to it there were only a couple of moments when I was actually visually seeing scenery, the rest it was almost like I was blind, and it was a phenomenal reading experience that I’ve never experienced before and I think the fact that I almost read it as if I was blind must mean it’s a really good book! If an author can write well enough to make a non-blind person read a book as if they’re blind that’s pretty talented! I really loved all of the characters, they were all so likeable and funny and normal; I can imagine these people just being an ordinary group of people that you would go to school with and it was nice to be able to relate and connect to them in that way. None of them had anything complicated to understand other than the previous relationship between Parker and Scott, but even that wasn’t complicated, just a mystery as to what actually happened between them. They were all just normal people with great personalities and none of them were too over-the-top or extreme and no one had a stupid unrealistic personality but at the same time every character had a different personality. There were no two characters that were the same. When I started reading this book it just seemed like a normal chain of events, a normal life for a normal person, other than the fact it was from the view of a blind girl and I remember when I started reading the book thinking something important better happen in this book, something that makes the book relevant. Something unique and extreme to keep it interesting because otherwise it’s going to drag on and on and get really dull and uninteresting. But actually my experience was the complete opposite; by the time I was about a third of the way through I realised that actually I didn’t want anything major or extreme to happen as that would ruin the book. It was nice to just be reading a book about a normal girl with a normal life and no complicated storylines to get you confused and distracted. And fortunately it did stay normal throughout the whole book, it was just about Parker’s very normal life and it was so great because of that fact that it’s become such a thing to have science fiction YA novels now that I think people have kind of forgotten how great and refreshing it is to just read a normal book based on someone’s very normal life without the complications that books like Divergent, The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner bring. Don’t get me wrong I love every single one of those series and the films too but I will always think it’s refreshing to read a book based on normality.
I would really suggest getting this book - even if you have to wait months until it’s your birthday or Christmas - it is such a great book that I think should be read by everyone, everywhere. It’s so insightful and inspiring. 5/5 stars.

Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop

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