Love and First Sight

SundQuist, Josh. Love and First Sight. 2017. 281p. 382 mins. ISBN 9780316305358. Available as an audiobook on Overdrive.

Will Porter is excited about starting his junior year in high school. This is the first time he will be attending a public high school. He has spent his entire school career away from home, at a school for blind students. Will is completely blind. He has never seen colors, movies, or his own face. Being blind from birth means he can’t even imagine what darkness looks like, because he has no contrast to draw on. Wishing to gain independence, Will made the decision to step away from the comfortable environment he went to, and now looks forward to typical high school experiences.

His first day starts on the wrong foot when he accidentally gropes a girl while climbing stairs. Guided by the vice principal, who is uncomfortable with Will but attempts not to show it, Will locates all of his classrooms and memorizes the directions. In journalism, he makes a girl names Cecily cry because he was accidentally staring at her. His teacher informs the class that Will is blind, marking him as different. During lunch, Will finds what he thinks is an empty table but he ends up sitting on Nick.

Soon, however, Will becomes friends with a group of kids, including Cecily and Nick. As their relationship deepens, Will worries that having a girlfriend will undercut his independence. When his mother returns home one day with an incredible possibility, Will is torn. The hospital where his father works is conducting trials where stem cells are implanted in the eye along with new cornea, providing the blind the possibility to see for the first time. If Will accepts this opportunity, his entire life will change. He may never see very well, for his mind will not have a frame of reference for everything he sees. But he might see colors, shapes, and a general glimpse of the world. There is the danger that the operation could fail, however, leaving him blind again.

In a world dominated by the sighted, however, there is a lot of information that is visually acquired and that is never shared orally. What do his friends really look like? What visual signals do they send each other that Will cannot see? And is Cecily really as gorgeous as his fingers tell him she is? Being able to see will change his life, but it may not be as perfect as he imagined ...