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alyce6d980 's review for:
The State of Grace
by Rachael Lucas
'Being a human is a complicated game - like seeing a ghost in the mirror and trying to echo everything they do.'
There's a lot happening in Grace's life.
Her dad is a wildlife photographer who has flown off to shoot polar bears, and her mum is struggling without him. Eve, an old friend from her university days, arrives on the scene and automatically starts meddling: she doesn't think that Grace and her thirteen-year-old sister Leah should rely on their mum as much as they do and encourages her to start living for herself rather than her daughters. The house falls into disarray as their mum starts spending all of her time with Eve, reliving her youth and neglecting her grown-up responsibilities.
Leah's got a new best friend, buddying up with the little sister of Grace's arch nemesis, Holly. Grace can't understand why Leah stopped hanging out with her old best friend, and her sister doesn't want to talk to her about it.
Then there's Gabe - the new kid at school with a bad boy reputation - who kissed Grace at a party during a game of spin the bottle, and may (or may not) be her boyfriend now. Being a teenage girl is hard, and Grace's Asperger's makes everything tougher.
Grace struggles to adapt to the new normal, because she hates change so much. All she wants is a guide to help her deal with everything going on, but because no one's offering her one it looks as though Grace is going to have to try to fix everything by herself.
I enjoyed reading 'The State of Grace' so much that I want to disregard the things I didn't like about it, and not many books make me feel like that!
I love this book, because I think it's going to do good things for a lot of people. Autism is not common in YA, which adds to the assumption that's it's "not normal". In reality, over 700,000 people in the UK are on the autistic spectrum, which boils down to about 1 in 100 people. It's not the norm, but it's not actually that rare, which means it should be easier for people who are on the spectrum to find themselves in novels. Reading about things is a great way to learn and to breed acceptance, so more autistic characters would improve the way the general population act towards autistic people: rather than seeing them as troublemakers, it would be easier to accept the fact that they're just different, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
'The State of Grace' is an #OwnVoices novel, because Rachael Lucas has Asperger's. She directly tackles the comments and incorrect assumptions made towards autistic people
'"What's it actually like?"
I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they - even worse - talk to me like I'm about five and can't understand.'
and because I have a few autistic friends and I've seen people treat them like that in the past, it made me both angry and extremely sad. People don't deserve to be treated like that.
Read the rest of my spoiler free review here!
There's a lot happening in Grace's life.
Her dad is a wildlife photographer who has flown off to shoot polar bears, and her mum is struggling without him. Eve, an old friend from her university days, arrives on the scene and automatically starts meddling: she doesn't think that Grace and her thirteen-year-old sister Leah should rely on their mum as much as they do and encourages her to start living for herself rather than her daughters. The house falls into disarray as their mum starts spending all of her time with Eve, reliving her youth and neglecting her grown-up responsibilities.
Leah's got a new best friend, buddying up with the little sister of Grace's arch nemesis, Holly. Grace can't understand why Leah stopped hanging out with her old best friend, and her sister doesn't want to talk to her about it.
Then there's Gabe - the new kid at school with a bad boy reputation - who kissed Grace at a party during a game of spin the bottle, and may (or may not) be her boyfriend now. Being a teenage girl is hard, and Grace's Asperger's makes everything tougher.
Grace struggles to adapt to the new normal, because she hates change so much. All she wants is a guide to help her deal with everything going on, but because no one's offering her one it looks as though Grace is going to have to try to fix everything by herself.
I enjoyed reading 'The State of Grace' so much that I want to disregard the things I didn't like about it, and not many books make me feel like that!
I love this book, because I think it's going to do good things for a lot of people. Autism is not common in YA, which adds to the assumption that's it's "not normal". In reality, over 700,000 people in the UK are on the autistic spectrum, which boils down to about 1 in 100 people. It's not the norm, but it's not actually that rare, which means it should be easier for people who are on the spectrum to find themselves in novels. Reading about things is a great way to learn and to breed acceptance, so more autistic characters would improve the way the general population act towards autistic people: rather than seeing them as troublemakers, it would be easier to accept the fact that they're just different, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
'The State of Grace' is an #OwnVoices novel, because Rachael Lucas has Asperger's. She directly tackles the comments and incorrect assumptions made towards autistic people
'"What's it actually like?"
I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they - even worse - talk to me like I'm about five and can't understand.'
and because I have a few autistic friends and I've seen people treat them like that in the past, it made me both angry and extremely sad. People don't deserve to be treated like that.
Read the rest of my spoiler free review here!