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We should hang out sometime : embarrassingly, a true story
2015
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The Paralympic ski racer, YouTube star and motivational speaker documents his coming of age as an amputee cancer survivor and his efforts to investigate past dates gone wrong to discover why he was still single. Simultaneous eBook. 30,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)

The Paralympic ski racer, YouTube star, and motivational speaker documents his coming of age as an amputee cancer survivor and his efforts to investigate past dates gone wrong to discover why he was still single. - (Baker & Taylor)

From Paralympic ski racer and YouTube star Josh Sundquist, comes an always-funny (and sometimes-awkward) memoir about teenage misadventures.

When I was twenty-five years old, it came to my attention that I had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I was actually under the impression that I was in a relationship, so this bit of news came as something of a shock.

Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down each of the girls he had tried to date since middle school and asked them straight up: What went wrong?

The results of Josh's semi-scientific investigation are in this book. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), and a misguided "grand gesture" at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love—or at least a girlfriend—in all the wrong places.

Poignant, relatable, and totally hilarious, this memoir is for anyone who has ever wondered, "Is there something wrong with me?"

(Spoiler Alert: the answer is no.) - (Grand Central Pub)

Author Biography

Josh Sundquist is a Paralympic ski racer, cancer survivor, popular YouTube vlogger, motivational speaker, and Halloween enthusiast. He is the author of We Should Hang Out Sometime, Love and First Sight, Semi-Famous and the bestselling Just Don't Fall. As a motivational speaker, Josh speaks to schools, conventions, and corporations across the world. He invites you to visit him online at joshsundquist.com or follow him at @JoshSundquist. - (Grand Central Pub)

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Booklist Reviews

At age 25, Josh Sundquist realizes he has only ever had one girlfriend—and that relationship lasted less than 24 hours. What made him incapable of having a relationship? Was it because of his prosthetic leg? Much better at science than at dating, Josh decides to recount his past dates and crushes to create a hypothesis for what went wrong, and then track down each girl to ask her what the heck happened. This is a hilarious and heartfelt memoir about a boy from a conservative Christian family navigating public school for the first time and trying to figure out who exactly he is—without being defined by his disability. Josh's voice is engaging and conversational, and readers will relate as they laugh along at his misadventures. From a disastrous mini-golf date to just general, suffusing awkwardness, Josh (who grew up to be a Paralympic ski racer) discovers that revisiting the past can be both embarrassing and enlightening. Irresistible fun. Copyright 2014 Booklist Reviews.

Publishers Weekly Reviews

In an autobiographical account that's equal parts hilarious and cringe-inducing, Sundquist—a Paralympic ski racer, cancer survivor, and motivational speaker—uses scientific methodology, complete with hypotheses and graphs, to analyze his not-so-successful history with women. Having an amputated leg never stopped Josh from attempting to date girls while he was growing up, but his insecurities and misinterpretations led to some awkward (and funny) moments. For example, there was the time he fell down on a golf date and ended up with his artificial foot pointing the wrong way ("You can't imagine the horror on the faces of the other golfers as they stared at a leg apparently so severely fractured that the foot was now capable of rotating 180 degrees"). From Josh's first "relationship" in middle school (which lasted 23 hours) to later ones in college, romance never had time to blossom. While his recent interviews and meetings with the girls from his past are often just as uncomfortable as their dates were, they also lead to answers as genuine as his narrative. Ages 12–up. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (Dec.)

[Page ]. Copyright 2014 PWxyz LLC

School Library Journal Reviews

Gr 9 Up—Sundquist, a motivational speaker, author, and Paralympic ski racer (he lost his left leg to Ewing's sarcoma at age nine), has had terrible luck with the ladies. In this laugh-out-loud memoir, he attempts to figure out why he can't catch a break, exploring the matter scientifically by analyzing and hypothesizing about each of his failed relationships, starting with his first girlfriend in the eighth grade. Sundquist tracks down the various women he's dated and interviews them to test his hypotheses. Each section of the book is dedicated to a different girlfriend and time period in Josh's life. His various theories are often illustrated through hilarious charts and graphs, adding to the lab report feel of the book. This is a unique, earnest, and funny coming-of-age story about Sundquist's experiences as a cancer survivor, amputee, Paralympic ski racer, and motivational speaker. Readers will appreciate the humorous and often embarrassingly accurate tales depicted in the pages of this book.—Annalise Ammer, City of Rochester Public Libraries, NY

[Page 140]. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Voice of Youth Advocates Reviews

When Josh turns twenty-five, he realizes that he has never had a girlfriend. Being an intelligent and analytical sort of person, he decides to go back and examine his failed relationships with girls, including follow-up interviews with each of the girls he had pursued, starting with Sarah Stevens in eighth grade. Factors that he considers significant include his serious bout with cancer as a child that leaves him with only one leg; conservative Christian parents whose conviction that public schools are cesspools of evil have Josh home-schooled until he starts high school; and his parents' refusal to allow him to date until he is sixteen. From eighth-grade Sarah through a young woman he meets when he is a motivational speaker after college, Josh walks through each of six failed relationships recounting his impressions, hand-drawing amusing graphs of "data," and summarizing a years-later conversation with each. His research shows him that through all of his failed relationships, it was he who had been too fixated on his disability, which he had been sure must have been dooming relationships. He finally realizes that this is not the case at all Pegged as being a "wholly hilarious" story, this seems to be a story for graduates of the Wimpy Kid series, as it is not well written, nor, to this reviewer, funny. Josh's description of his incredibly conservative parents, who are quite sure dances are only good for girls to become pregnant, seems sad. His stories feel like perpetrations of stereotypes rather than humorous. The author has a following, both as a video blogger and as a motivational speaker, so his followers will no doubt welcome this book with open arms. But for junior and high school libraries with budget considerations, this book does not need to be on the high-priority list.—Mary Ann Darby 2Q 2P J S Copyright 2011 Voya Reviews.

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