I NEEDED THIS BOOK

I haven't written a book review in a long time, because I didn't come across any that was out-of-the-box. But Josh Sundquist's "We Should Hang Out Sometime" brought me back from that hiatus. It is a refreshing non-fiction about Josh's inability to find the girl of his dreams. 

In his mid-20s, Josh looked back on his life and realised that he never had a real girlfriend. But rather than feeling hopeless like most others would, he decided to find out exactly why nobody would date him. What was so repulsive about him anyway? So, he reflected on all the girls he'd had a crush on since childhood through his graduate studies, and set out to find why they never seemed to like him back. 

He used a pseudo-scientific process completed with sufficient background info about each of his crushes, a hypothesis of why they didn't like him, and a proper analysis. In the last step, he confronted each of the ladies and explicitly asked them what went wrong, thus helping him reach a definitive conclusion. He employed visual contents such as graphs and charts to explain his social interactions in each case, making the book a tad funnier. 

When I started reading this book, I had no idea who Josh Sundquist was. FYI, he's a motivational speaker, a prominent YouTuber, a cancer survivor who had one of his legs amputated as a child, and a Paralympic athlete. He mentioned his disability in the passing in this book, and contradictory to his own beliefs, he realised that none of his crushes actually had a problem with that. 

Though this is a non-fiction, the narrative feels like a young adult fiction that is hilarious as well as embarrassing. Starting from Josh's inability to profess his love for someone, to him getting rejected by someone and his general lack of understanding on how to interact with a girl he liked – these are the small personal things that one can relate to. These are the things that many of us have experienced. The awkward hilarity of his situations made me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. And the best part is that he writes like he would talk, so he gets his message across clearly, making the book a light read. 

There comes a time in most peoples' lives when they start getting frustrated of their love-life, or a lack thereof. Josh Sundquist, through his own experiences, motivate us not to get frustrated, for the right one will come along in due time. "We Should Hang Out Sometime" helps you realise just that. I'd recommend this book to anybody who's going through a "nobody loves me" phase. 

Arman R. Khan is an engineer, a caffeine addict, a dreamer and a culture enthusiast who takes life one day at a time. Correspond with him at fb.com/arman.r.khan or tweet @ArmanRK