In the tradition of Gayle Forman and John Green comes this extraordinary YA debut about a blind teen girl navigating life and love in high school.Parker Grant doesn’t need 20/20 vision to see right through you. That’s why she created the Rules: Don’t treat her any differently just because she’s blind, and never take advantage. There will be no second chances. Just ask Scott Kilpatrick, the boy … Kilpatrick, the boy who broke her heart.
When Scott suddenly reappears in her life after being gone for years, Parker knows there’s only one way to react–shun him so hard it hurts. She has enough on her mind already, like trying out for the track team (that’s right, her eyes don’t work but her legs still do), doling out tough-love advice to her painfully naive classmates, and giving herself gold stars for every day she hasn’t cried since her dad’s death three months ago. But avoiding her past quickly proves impossible, and the more Parker learns about what really happened–both with Scott, and her dad–the more she starts to question if things are always as they seem. Maybe, just maybe, some Rules are meant to be broken.
Combining a fiercely engaging voice with true heart, debut author Eric Lindstrom’s Not If I See You First illuminates those blind spots that we all have in life, whether visually impaired or not.more
I am a great fan of Eric Lindstrom’s writing. He understands people, and especially teens, and can portray their angsty world view so beautifully. Parker is blind, but she can cope really well on her own: she has to, now that her father is dead. He was her one true champion and life without him is lonely and hard. Parker is holding on to a lot of grief and anger. Part of that anger stems from a fractured friendship with her childhood friend Scott. When Parker’s and Scott’s high schools merge, she has to decide whether to let go of her anger or move on. Parker’s feelings of aching loss and loneliness are magnified by the presence of the one boy who she had once trusted beyond all others, apart from her father – and now he is gone, too. What a fabulous, heartwarming story. I loved watching Parker mature and overcome her stubborn emotions. Another fabulous YA read by Eric Lindstrom!
I have never read a book about blind people so for me this was a really different story to read especially as we were seeing this story unfold from the main character’s point of view who was blind. Eric Lindstrom did brilliantly on representing this kind of disability and how it can affect someone especially someone who wasn’t always permanently blind, so we also see her adjusting to life without her dad there to help her deal with being blind. The story begins 3 months after her father dies and we see how Parker is dealing with it.
At first, you believe it’s going to be a good romance story I would label this story as one where it just builds on friendships and repairs the ones that have been broken. So it was a nice story and it was nice to read one that was based just on friendships rather than relationships.
We are introduced to quite a few characters throughout the book but let’s start with the main character Parker, I really liked her character and how sarcastic she is I also understood where she was coming from when she didn’t want people to help her so much and try to be independent. So I could sympathise with the character a lot and she slowly began to open up to her friends especially over her father’s death and how she feels about that.
Scott, he was a big part of this book at first we know that Parker doesn’t want anything to do with him and then eventually we figure out why I think the reason for that was just kind of stupid but as she was blind I could totally understand why but it still felt kind of stupid. Scott became such a nice guy that he was doing things without her even knowing and he didn’t think he deserved to be forgiven. At first, I didn’t like Scott but then he slowly began to grow on me.
Jason he was really nice at first and then he became a dick so that’s all I have to say on him because I was like this could be an awesome relationship and then it wasn’t.
There were quite a few other characters in the book but I don’t really have many thoughts on them, a few of them just felt like they were there to help Parker deal with the blindness rather be an actual character.