literarystrawberry's reviews
1156 reviews

I don't have sensory issues myself, so take my review with a grain of salt, but I thought this seemed like a good first overview of the topic. Some of the personal anecdotes stretched a little longer than I would have expected from the title, possibly slipping into more memoir-like territory than self-help; I didn't mind much, since I enjoyed the author's narrative voice and personality, but I do wonder if an actual teen with sensory issues who just wants answers might start to go "Okay, enough about your high school boyfriends, get back to the information I need." Overall though it was a pretty quick, easy read, and I hope the actual intended audience will find it helpful.

I liked the representation of autistic experiences like stimming and meltdowns, and showing both the positives (like the joy of engaging with a special interest) and difficulties (like sensory overload) of being autistic. All that seemed to ring true. 

Unfortunately, not much else did. The characters felt more like mouthpieces to teach about autism and disability activism than real people. Autistic and neurotypical characters alike all used just the right language and knew precisely how to articulate how they were feeling and why they did the things they did. When there /was/ miscommunication for conflict reasons it was clarified later in heart-to-hearts where the characters spelled out exactly what they had really been thinking and feeling. (Not saying you should never have those scenes where characters communicate those things to each other, but it just felt like /everything/ was spelled out with no room for nuance or complexity.)

The other thing that pulled me out of the story was that the stakes when they "broke into" the Nucleus headquarters were practically non-existent. I know it's a middle grade novel, and you need to be willing to suspend your disbelief to /some/ extent, but everything about this section was so laughably easy (I spent most of the time going "WHERE ARE THE SECURITY CAMERAS") that there was no real tension.

//Every single// worker just happens to be at a big meeting so there's no one to see them walk into the (unlocked, unguarded) labs? Because Kelsey knows how to get around the parental controls on her mom's laptop she's able to effortlessly hack into a high security billionaire's laptop with super secret files?? That one lady scientist sees them and doesn't react at all but just lets them keep doing what they're doing despite having no context for why they're there?? (I get that she was already having some second thoughts about the company, but she doesn't know what they're doing, why isn't her first reaction just "Hey, what are these kids doing here?") And then when she /does/ confront them later she decides to quit her job and help them after talking to them for like five minutes?? And why was she the only one at first to be guarding/keeping track of the captured kids, where on earth were all the security guards at this point? (At the big meeting, I guess???)

And while the bad guy was a complete "evil billionaire" caricature, they established no stakes for what he might do if he caught them. They kept /saying/ they were risking so much, but nothing ever happened to make me believe they were actually in danger. 

So yeah. I'm grateful that we're getting more representation of autism and other disabilities/neurodivergencies in fiction, especially those written by people who have first-hand experience. I just hope that we'll also start to see an increase in the quality of the stories that carry that representation. 

Got into Epic: The Musical recently and wanted to refresh my memory on the original story (pretty sure my main source of knowledge before was from a Wishbone novelization I had ages ago), but wasn't ready to commit yet to reading the actual Odyssey, so this gave a nice quick overview for now.

Definitely had the feel of a classic children's novel to me, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's considered one in about 50 years or so. Not rating it higher only bc for me personally it was just fine-- didn't dislike it, and I can understand the hype, but I guess animal stories and survival stories have never really been my particular jam-- but it was cute, and I really liked the Jon Klassen-esque illustrations.

I can't believe Oliver is canonically a brony

"Please, body-- If you have to have another panic attack, I understand, but-- It's just-- 
Well, never mind. Do what you must...
... I'll love you either way."

Oh, Amy <3 

Utterly delightful. The art was so fun and pleasant to look at, the story was straight-forward but with several little twists I didn't expect, and while it was an original story, the way Jane used her wits to overcome each new trial reminded me a lot of classic fairy tales or folktales. 

Shaving off a sliver of a star just because of one minor event midway that confused me and felt a little deus-ex-machina-y since I didn't feel it had been properly established earlier

when the giant fish snags her shawl in its teeth and the shawl seems to burst into flames; when I looked back through the book the only thing I could find was that the shawl was magically meant to keep her warm at the bottom of the ocean, so I /guess/ that's supposed to be where the fire comes from? But it was pretty unclear and seemed to happen out of nowhere as far as I could tell

, but other than that I thought everything fit together really well, and it was just such a fun and enjoyable book. Definitely my favorite of Vera Brosgol's works so far.