Quick Take
- Narration: Josh Sundquist self-narrates with genuine comedic timing and self-deprecating ease, his comfort with the material translating into a relaxed, podcast-intimate delivery.
- Themes: Adolescent longing and social anxiety, disability and self-perception, the gap between intention and how others see you
- Mood: Warmly funny with an undercurrent of real emotional honesty
- Verdict: A disarming memoir that will resonate with anyone who spent their teen years convinced the problem was them, told by someone who went back and actually asked.
I was in the middle of a late evening walk when I started this one, and I made the mistake of listening to the Putt-Putt scene on a quiet residential street where my laughter would have woken the neighbors. Josh Sundquist has a gift for comedic timing that translates into audio extremely well, and this memoir, which began as a personal experiment and became something much more resonant, is one of the stranger and more affecting things I have listened to in the teen memoir category.
The setup is almost absurdist: at 25, Sundquist realizes he has never had a girlfriend, tracks down each girl he had tried to date since middle school, and interviews them to find out what went wrong. The methodology is described as semiscientific in the synopsis, and that self-aware humor about the enterprise is part of what makes the whole project work. He is not wallowing. He is conducting an inquiry, and that investigative frame gives what could have been pure cringe memoir a structural purpose that keeps it from becoming self-pitying.
The Prosthetic Foot and Everything It Carries
Sundquist lost his left leg to bone cancer as a child and went on to become a Paralympic ski racer. His disability is present throughout this memoir but is never the sole lens through which the romantic failures are examined. Some misadventures are genuinely about the prosthetic leg, and the Putt-Putt date is still astonishing in its sequence of events. Others are just about a teenager being catastrophically awkward in ways that have nothing to do with his body. That distinction matters. Sundquist is doing something careful here: he refuses to let disability be the catch-all explanation for social difficulty, which both honors his own complexity and makes the book more useful to any teenager who has ever blamed their problems on one specific thing about themselves.
When the Interviews Arrive
The structural gambit of going back to ask these women what actually happened pays off in ways that surprise. Some of the answers are what you might expect. Others land with quiet force. Sundquist includes these conversations with honesty about what it cost him to hear certain things, and the memoir’s emotional core is in those moments where the gap between who he thought he was and who others perceived begins to close. Reviewer Jeffrey notes the book is broken into many distinct parts that make the decades of time it covers manageable, and that’s accurate. The chapter structure is episodic in a way that serves both the comedy and the emotional accumulation.
Self-Narration and the Teen Voice
At six hours, this is a full-length listen, and Sundquist’s self-narration is one of its genuine assets. His instinct for timing is evident from the first chapter, and the fact that he is recounting his own humiliations gives the delivery an authenticity that a hired narrator would struggle to replicate. He knows exactly which moments to rush and which to let sit. Reviewer Chris describes feeling able to relate to the story and notes it truly touched his heart, which is a meaningful response given that Sundquist’s specific circumstances are quite particular. That capacity to translate a specific life into universal feeling is what distinguishes memoir from autobiography, and this one achieves it.
Age Appropriateness and Listening Context
The book carries a teen classification alongside its children’s audiobook tag, and that dual designation is accurate. The content is appropriate for middle and high school listeners, with romantic embarrassment but no mature sexual content. Parents of younger children should note that the memoir’s humor is most accessible to listeners who have started navigating their own social lives. For high school readers especially, this is an unusually honest account of what adolescent longing actually feels like from the inside. Those who want a purely comedic listen without any emotional depth will find it is doing more than that, which might surprise them. That surprise is part of its value.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is We Should Hang Out Sometime appropriate for middle schoolers, or is it aimed at older teens?
The memoir is best suited to high school listeners, roughly ages 13 and up. The humor and self-reflection work better for readers who have started experiencing their own social life. Middle schoolers can certainly access it, but the retrospective frame and the interview-based structure resonate more with slightly older listeners.
How much of the book deals with Sundquist’s disability versus his romantic life?
Both threads run throughout. His cancer history and life as a Paralympic athlete provide context, and the prosthetic leg features in some of the funnier scenes, but Sundquist deliberately avoids making disability the explanation for all of his social difficulties. The book is primarily about adolescent awkwardness with disability as one authentic thread among several.
Does Josh Sundquist’s self-narration hold up over the full six-hour runtime?
For most listeners, yes. His comedic timing is genuine and his comfort with his own story translates into relaxed, confident delivery. The narration has a podcast intimacy to it, which some listeners will love and others may find too casual. At six hours it is a committed listen but not an exhausting one.
How does the memoir end? Does Sundquist find a single answer to why he was always single?
The investigation yields multiple partial truths rather than a single tidy answer. The emotional conclusion is more about self-understanding than resolution. Reviewer JM notes the investigation is somewhat odd but very entertaining, which fairly captures the tone of the ending.
