“What is Wrong With Me?”

Rebecca Carey 

The Paw Print

“We Should Hang Out Sometime” takes the readers on the journey of Josh Sundquist’s life from middle school at age 13 to after grad school at age 25. In his book, readers can see his life through his eyes and through his experiences; readers are allowed to understand Sundquist better. Through his realizations we, as readers, can begin to see the author grow as a person. Sundquist uses humor and relatable experiences to find common ground with the reader. His style is certainly attractive compared to other memoirs whose writing might not connect with a young adult reader as well as Sundquist does. Throughout the book he uses both emotions and logic to deal with and explain his experiences. Sundquist jokes in the book that he only understands logic because emotions are extremely confusing, especially with girls.

Josh Sundquist is a Paralympic ski racer, cancer survivor, and motivational speaker. Throughout his life he has dealt with more than people normally do, such as losing his leg to cancer when he was 9. He survived, and his faith in God grew stronger. Even though he survived cancer he still was going through difficulties with low self-esteem. He saw himself as different from other kids and didn’t want to be a burden due to his disability. In his book he talks about how he only had two rules for himself as a kid: 1) Never be a burden and 2) Never be different. He struggled with feeling different from other kids and made sure to confront the problem when it arose. This topic can be seen as very relatable to many young adults who find it difficult adjusting to the change of moving to a bigger school or leaving for college.

Another topic that is relatable for students is being able to navigate through high school.  Most students have a hard time adjusting to the difference in status, schoolwork, and interacting with peers. Josh Sundquist confronts the topic when he explains that he was homeschooled until 9^th grade. He then went to public high school and didn’t understand that taking notes was important or that the really beautiful, popular girls were ‘out of his league.’ He started understanding how high school worked and he was introduced to the feeling of being rejected. This introduced a new struggle of asking himself ‘what is wrong with me?’

The book is set up with the introduction of seven different females that at one time or another made an appearance in Josh Sundquist’s life. The introduction or ‘Background’ is the first segment when a female is introduced and segments titled ‘Hypothesis’ and ‘Investigation’ follow. The hypothesis is a short segment that explains why the author thinks the relationship didn’t work. The investigation is when Sundquist interacts with these women ten years later and he asks them what went wrong.

While this book’s age group is geared more towards young adults, Sundquist’s way of writing is successful in grabbing a variety of different interests and age groups. Little, Brown and Company, published the book in December 2014. A hardcover copy of “We Should Hang Out Sometime” by Josh Sundquist can be found for $15.30 at Walmart or online with the ISBN 978-0-316-25102-0.