On his first day at a new school, blind sixteen-year-old Will Porter accidentally groped a girl on the stairs, sat on another student in the cafeteria, and somehow drove a classmate to tears. High school can only go up from here, right?

As Will starts to find his footing, he develops a crush on a sweet but shy girl named Cecily. And despite his fear that having a girlfriend will make him inherently dependent on someone sighted, the two of them grow closer and closer. Then an unprecedented opportunity arises: an experimental surgery that could give Will eyesight for the first time in his life.

But learning to see is more difficult than Will ever imagined, and he soon discovers that the sighted world has been keeping secrets. It turns out Cecily doesn’t meet traditional definitions of beauty—in fact, everything he’d heard about her appearance was a lie engineered by their so-called friends to get the two of them together. Does it matter what Cecily looks like? No, not really. But then why does Will feel so betrayed?


I expected this to be lighthearted and warm and funny. And it was. But it was so much more. It was complex and informative without being overbearing, and full of captivating, diverse characters. The research of this book was astounding, and opened by eyes (no pun intended) to the complexities of sight and how we take it for granted.

I thought Will was fantastic. He was funny and optimistic and really self-assured. I also really liked Cecily and the rest of Will's gang. They were a great group of nerdy friends. I mean, they have Settlers of Catan Sunday! Talk about awesome.

Overall, this was smart and sweet and exactly what I wanted.