Brenna has given Taylor such a wonderful voice, it's a joy to read this book for the simple fact of getting to know Taylor and her experience of the world. With her Asperger's, there are things she doesn't get that are obvious to the rest of us, but there are also things she sees and understands that many of us might miss.

In this book she tells the story of her summer in France when she is nineteen and on the cusp of adulthood, trying to gain confidence in her competence to claim independence from her mother and move forward as a full person. It's a relatable and inspiring story.

A paragraph I enjoyed that displays the literalism Taylor must struggle with in her thinking:

I am working hard not the let the "afraid" part win, now that I am nineteen years old. I do not want to be like Stanley in Harold Pinter's play, The Birthday Party, who never left his bedroom and who was at the mercy of his landlady. I am referring to Harold Pinter the playwright, not Harold Pinter my gerbil, who is in Canada with his son, Samuel Beckett, getting looked after by my friend Shauna. Technically, Harold Pinter the gerbil is a female, being Samuel Beckett's mother, but gender can be flexible and so I think of him as male, just as his name suggests.

And a paragraph that I enjoy as a quote:

Numbers are the smallest unit of meaning I know. Words are the next largest unit of meaning, and in spite of the confusion they often bring, I admire their complexities. Words are almost as interesting as numbers. But it is safer not to use words unless you have to.