Reviews with content warning for Animal death - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

I will be thinking about this one for a while. This was one of the best audiobooks I have heard so far so that definitely improved the experience but mostly to see situations through Christopher's way of understanding the world was extremely insightful of autistic experiences, that I don't know have much knowledge of.

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mothiver's review against another edition

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as an Autistic person, I found the main character a pretty inaccurate representation of Autistic thinking and behaviour. upon looking it up, I then discovered the author saying he had done absolutely no research. really worries me that schools assign this to kids claiming it’ll help them understand Autism better… if anything, it’ll only give false impressions.
(also, kinda weird how the protagonist

worrying about being hurt by a guy who just murdered a dog

is presented as illogical? maybe I’m misreading it)

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pupriku's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A fun and interesting read. I'd finished it before I'd even realised if was time for it to end and I was left wanting more about Christopher's life.
The author never explicitly states what condition Christopher has, some people have assumed it is a form of Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder and decided it was an attack on them as it's stereotypical. However since the author does not actually say this, it's irrelevant. Christopher is showing as human and that is the importance of this book.
I thoroughly enjoyed it, the only negative I have is the amount of images (which do add to the story somewhat) that take up large portions of pages.
Otherwise a really good and short read that I'll be thinking about for a long time to come.

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pianoplayer279's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It took a while to get going but once the plot really began, I really enjoyed it. Age 14+

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kateellis00's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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chelseasofia's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is so beautiful. I read it a long time ago and loved it. I reread it because Jeff Woodman did the audio and I’ve been enjoying listening to him do the LJG books. He’s just delightful and though he uses a different voice here (so he sounds unfamiliar), I was not disappointed. He’s a fantastic voice actor!

But besides that, the book was just as brilliant, funny, and heartbreaking as ever. I don’t know whether this is a realistic representation of autism or being on the spectrum in general, so I’ve left that to the side. However, I realized this time around how much I resonated emotionally and in some ways mentally with the main character Christopher. Like how he likes some colors and detests others, and uses these markers or rules to order his world. I did that when I was little too, just like having food preferences, as a way to feel some sense of control in the world and what happened to me. These things make sense to me and I still have certain preferences that might seem eccentric or ridiculous to most people, but it’s brilliant to read the perspective of a character who makes sense of the world this way and to feel seen a little. In this way, I think the book does speak broadly to neurodivergence in general.

I also just resonated emotionally in the way of how as children sometimes we just can’t understand how or why adults do the things they do. And the adults that bother to meet you where you are, are like gold. This book has me thinking a lot about how we’re all trying our best, and sometimes even our best can still hurt the people we love. Or, rather, the people tasked to care for us can really truly love us and still make terrible mistakes. Not that that excuses their behavior, it just shows how messy life really is.

My heart was with this character from the get-go and I was rooting for him all through. This one will stick with me for awhile.

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ajs279's review against another edition

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fast-paced

1.0

The book was fun to read but there was not enough research or communication with the neurodivergent community

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girlofmanyplaces's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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