The quick cut: An Autistic girl at a prestigious school on scholarship finds herself over her head when she switches places with a rich classmate at a party.
A real review:
Thank you to Wednesday Books for providing the arc for an honest review.
When you're different, you have to work harder to accomplish your goals. Not only do you have to do everything everyone else does, but you also have to go above and beyond to start at the same level others naturally have. These are skills and efforts that Waverly is all too aware of.
Waverly is an Autistic girl on scholarship at the prestigious Webber Academy. She's doing everything she can to fit in and take advantage of the opportunities there, including masking who she truly is. When one night a classmate named Charlotte asks her to switch places with her at a masquerade ball, Waverly reluctantly agrees. What she doesn't know is that there's more going on than meets the eye and she's just placed herself in the middle.
I wanted to like this book so badly. An Autistic heroine trying to fit in at a fancy high school? It is a setup that's practically written for me. However, the cover and the description of this story feels very deceptive to me because what it's really about is something else entirely. This story is much closer to a disaster movie than a high school story.
The one thing this story does excellently is Autistic representation. While there is plenty of other disability representation throughout, the Autism representation is the strongest. The author talks about masking, overstimulation, planning conversations, and other aspects common to those of us in the Autism community. It's impressive how many elements she managed to work in. That being said, I feel like she missed a huge opportunity in the plot to showcase other aspects, like how excellent we Autistics can be at pattern recognition.
The core of the issue with this book is it's inconsistency. It tries too hard to work too many genres into the story and ends up struggling to do well at showcasing any of them. The pace starts slow and then at about the halfway mark suddenly rockets into fast territory. It's enough to give a reader whiplash.
An inconsistent story with strong Autism representation.
My rating: 2.5 out of 5