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For real tho, this was good. The Love triangle was deeply deeply deeply frustrating, but overall a fun, heartwarming book with some valuable representation!

Jessie Kassis has been diagnosed with autism just as her first year of high school is beginning, but she’s doing everything she can to make sure no one finds out.  Determined to make high school different from her previous experiences, she sets a list of goals, which include things like joining the drama club and making a group of friends.  But after she meets her science partner, Levi, she’s got a new goal - get Levi to be her first kiss.  Complicating matters are the drama of other people’s relationships, Levi’s obnoxious girlfriend, some mixed signals, and a very sweet, attentive and supportive boy who might have feelings of his own for Jessie.

To be perfectly honest, Something More would not usually be my type of book.  I like contemporary YA romance, but I usually expect it to have something more than just the love plot going on.  This book really didn’t.  Other than a pretty minor subplot involving Jessie’s attempt to get to perform with the drama club even though ninth graders usually aren’t allowed - which ended up tied in with the romance storyline anyway - pretty much the only thing Jessie and her friends thought about were romances.  Even subplots that were technically separate, like the conflict within Jessie’s friend group or her desperation for her Palestinian immigrant parents to loosen up and let her have more freedom ended up tying back to the question of which boy she should be with.  I got a little frustrated and bored with that aspect after a while.

But I still ended up enjoying this book, and that’s because of Jessie’s character and the way Khalilieh wrote her relationships with the people around her.  This is an author with a gift for getting the way people are and avoiding writing any character as a trope or stereotype - even when Jessie herself is slotting them into those categories.  Jessie was an extremely relatable character.  She’s an autistic girl who is frequently told by others that she “doesn’t seem autistic,” and while some of this is because she is really good at masking, a lot of it is that her interests and the way she copes with her autism - like by teaching herself to be the “funny friend” in her group - don’t fit with the stereotypes.  Khalilieh uses this as an opportunity to talk about how female experiences of autism can be different in ways I haven’t seen mentioned much in other books.  Her depiction of Jessie’s relationships with her friends felt very true to teenage girl friend groups, with both the nearly co-dependent closeness that develops almost immediately and the constant petty arguments and dramas.  Levi, with his mixed signals and moments of sweetness and understanding, was perfectly imperfect as Jessie’s first crush in the book, and Griffin, her “best friend” who wants to be more, was like an actually nice version of the Nice Guy.  Both of them were more nuanced than a love triangle plot usually allows for, so that it didn’t feel forced that Jessie took so long to make her choice.  I liked that

Griffin wasn’t perfect - he was the only person she told about her autism who tried to deny it at first - while Levi was someone she had a real connection with and wasn’t just the evil first choice.

I also really enjoyed Jessie’s relationships with her siblings, especially her sister.  And Jessie’s changing feelings about autism over the course of the book, from wanting to hide it to realizing that the people she was close to would only really know her if they knew about, felt very natural and authentic.

I came to the conclusion early on that I may be too old for this book. Its told from the point of view of a 15 year old and I don't relate to that so it made it hard for me to get through as someone likely outside its target demographic. But I feel like the portrayal and descriptions of some of the female characters, specifically those portrayed as the 'villains' of the story was borderline misogynistic. I did like that all the characters were portrayed as imperfect. It made it feel more realistic. 
I also have an issue with the conclusion. It feels like some plot points were left open and most of the everyone except the main character herself and her love interest had no conclusion. What happened with her brother's career? Her sister's boyfriend? Her friends? All these unanswered questions made the ending feel rushed.
It felt a bit like a disney channel show and I can't decide if I meant that positively or negatively. 

I can’t believe it took me so long to finally pick this book up. 

Something More chronicles Jessie Kassis, a fifteen year old girl and recently diagnosed autistic, as she goes through her first year of high school and navigating all the things that come with adolescence. If there’s ever a book I wished I had growing up, Something More would definitely be one of them. Somehow, Khalilieh was able to get me so wrapped up into the story that it made think about my time in high school as an autistic woman. Jessie felt like the friend I wished I had growing up and I really appreciated the time Khalilieh put into addressing Jessie’s character development as well as showing autistic people getting their own happy endings. 

If you’re looking for a fresh voice in the YA genre with Palestinian and autistic rep featuring a friends-to-lovers romance, you should definitely check out Something More.