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

Paralympian skier, motivational speaker, and video blogger Sundquist's funny and endearing memoir chronicles his attempt to examine his romantic encounters after he discovers, at age twenty-five, that he's never actually had a girlfriend. The resulting investigation--presented in reportlike format with footnotes, charts, and graphs--covers ten years of would-be relationships cut short by uncertainty, awkwardness, and misunderstanding.

At age 25, Josh Sundquist realizes he has only ever had one girlfriend d 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 thout 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.

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 heáconsiders 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.