Name: Kids Like Us
ISBN: 9780374306281

Hilary Reyl

A tender, smart, and romantic YA novel about a teenage boy on the autism spectrum who learns he is capable of love.

Kids Like Us

jess

I quite liked Kids Like Us. I was interested at first because I’m on the autism spectrum too, and I could really connect with Martin in a lot of ways. For example, I, too, am obsessed with an old French novel and for quite a while I saw my life through the lens of that novel. (The novel in question is Les Miserables, and I genuinely believe that I lifted a significant amount of my personality from Les Amis de l’ABC, especially Grantaire.) There are other books, too. I could identify with the obsessive interests of Martin and Layla; I know for a fact my ALL-CONSUMING INTEREST in the Percy Jackson series was a significant factor in getting diagnosed. I imagined I was Percy, just like Martin imagines he’s Marcel. We both live in our own little bubbles of fiction. So Martin’s repetitive recounting of In Search of Lost Time was very relatable to me, even if I didn’t understand what was going on because I didn’t read the novel. God knows I’ve done that more times than I can count, so I can’t exactly fault him. 

Martin was so well-written too. He was’t a stereotype of autistic kids, and he does call it out that he’s expected to be a stereotype. He’s a good character and he tries his best to understand the world around him, which is difficult even for neurotypical kids. He’s very fleshed out and definitely seemed like a real person, and he had wonderful character development throughout the book. His trouble with pronouns was interesting as a literary device, because the book opens in second person, and occasionally veers back to second person, which puts a whole new light on it in literary terms. It transposes the reader into the book like Martin does with Search. 

I wish we had found out more about Simon and the girl Martin calls Gilberte. I feel like their stories were left kind of hanging. I really liked both of them, though, and all of Martin’s friends. I liked Layla too - and gosh, I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen an autistic girl in media, which I appreciated so, so much. I loved the setting in France. It was so idyllic and set a really lovely tone for the story as a whole. 

There’s a lot of really interesting discourses about neurodiversity and autism brought up and left for the reader to ponder. I can’t comment on that too much. I myself would probably be considered “high functioning” (even if I don’t particularly like that label, because according to the psychiatrist that diagnosed me, I was hopelessly low-functioning Asperger’s, and basically there are a lot of problems with the high/low functioning binary that I’m not going to get into or we’ll be here all day) and I wouldn’t want anyone to try to cure me. Like, I may not be functioning as well as most young adults my age but I am doing my damndest to live my life how I want to. And Martin is too. But like me, he recognizes that there are things he’s missing out on and it’s not bad to better yourself if it’s making yourself happier. There’s a lot more discourses in the book, and Kids Like Us is a book that makes you think, whether you are on or off the spectrum.

Ella Zegarra

Original de: El Blog del Gato - El Extraño Gato del Cuento

En ningún momento del libro pensé que fuera aburrido o difícil de leer, solo que se me hizo realmente difícil seguir con él, y abandonarlo nunca pasó por mi mente, ya que últimamente se me hace fácil abandonar libro cuando no cumplen con mis expectativas o simplemente me aburren. Con Kids Like Us se me hizo problemático porque no pasa eso, cada vez que realmente continuaba con la lectura podía pasar de la página 30 a la 90 sin darme cuenta del tiempo, pero llegaba al punto que era todo lo que podía leer y lo dejaba descansar por una semana.

e interesante y frustrante por muchos momentos, lo que supongo la escritora quiso darnos con la historia de Martin.


  


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I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. A big thank you to Hilary Reyl and Text Publishing!


There is something truly raw and genuine-feeling about this book, that I don't feel like I come across often in YA contemporary. 



  
    "I'm finding out that there are a lot of us who hate that the world is trying to cure us. I think the point is that we don't need to be cured" 
  



Kids Like Us is a very character driven story. The storyline is fairly slow moving, but in a way that lets you delve into the mind of Martin. The story focuses a lot on how Martin perceives the world through his understanding of Search, through the tools that he's been developing with the help of his family and The Centre, and through his own intuition of how the world and others work.

I adored how much I felt I learned from this book. Reyl dives into so many little nuances that I haven't come across before in autism-related lit. For example, a lot of Martin's responses involve echolalia - repeating back what he's heard before instead of using 'original language' - and mixing up his pronouns, both things that have featured very little, if at all, in other books featuring characters on the spectrum.

Of course, ASD, like so many other neurodiversities, develops and presents differently in one person to the next. But so often I feel as though the same things are presented over and over in a stereotypical way. In this way, Kids Like Us breaks free of this narrow-minded way of presenting autism.



  
    "Missing out on subtelties is one of my specialties."
  



I also loved the examination of identity in this book. Martin's best friend, Layla, who is also on the spectrum begins a conversation about the neurodiversity movement - a movement that society should accept people on the autistic spectrum for who they are instead of trying to cure them.

The discussion of where the line is between equipping someone on the spectrum with tools to navigate the world and giving them therapy to develop them closer to being neurotypical/general-ed is, of course, a tough one that requires a lot of discussion and understanding on the topic.

But I truly admired it's inclusion to the story. It is presented in a way that will fuel readers to ponder on the idea and how they view people on the spectrum.



  
    "I'm finding out that there are a lot of us who hate that the world is trying to cure us. I think the point is that we don't need to be cured" 
  



There are a lot of other things that the book does well 

+ this book will make you hungry and it will possibly make you want to draw moths on your shoes
+ you will fall in love with Elisabeth - she is everything that should be an older sibling
+ you will root for the friends, as they navigate the difference between friend and moth, and develop their own views and understanding of interacting with someone on the spectrum.

I will finish up by being completely transparent and saying that I can not comment accurately on the authenticity of the spectrum rep in this book, however, there are plenty of ownvoices reviews out there - including the one featured on my full review.



  Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

Kids Like Us

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