After our rave review of Cindy Rodriguez’s debut When Reason Breaks—about two very different girls who are both dealing with depression—we were excited to invite both reviewer and author to the website this week to discuss the book further.
I Was Here is full of wasted potential; Meg is as much of a prop to the story as Mr. Body is to Clue.
Writing about characters with mental illness can be challenging in various ways. How do you accurately convey a character’s state of mind, without compromising on clarity or excitement? How do you show a character’s skewed perceptions of the world?
“I learned absolutely nothing from Rachel’s leukemia,” this book’s protagonist starts off in its in-universe foreword, and I grinned and said, “YES! This is going to be good.”
Although Kurt’s character seems to largely exist to serve the central romance, I was pleasantly surprised by how many pitfalls Perkins avoided in a wonderfully understated manner. Various assumptions and tropes were casually turned over with a single line here or there.
The Categorical Universe of Candice Phee is a fun, well-written book, if an imperfect autism read.
Rogue is one of the rare novels about an autistic character written by an autistic author, and the book raises many intriguing questions to discuss.
Tommy Smythe disappears one Friday night, and even after weeks of searching he can’t be found. This is the story of a rural community’s search for Tommy, and the complicated social networks created by wrongdoings and secrets in a small town.
The book ultimately provides a single-faceted understanding of autism and many of the painful interactions with Willem’s teacher and peers would likely hit too close to home for autistic students.
Like in real life, autism spectrum disorder alone is never the whole story, and Baskin does a good job balancing Jason’s autism with his writing life, family, school, and budding friendship. She’s succeeded in creating an authentic autistic character who is anything but stereotypical.