What to Say Next by Julie Buxbaum

The Quick Cut: A high functioning Autistic boy finds friendship in a popular girl when she unexpectedly sits at the same lunch table as him. A Real Review: When you hear the word Autism, there's a good chance that you get a specific mental image. It very likely involves a male who is nonverbal or incapable of managing his life alone. The truth is that Autism is a spectrum, one that we need to see more range of. With the story of David, we experience the lifestyle of a high functioning Autistic in high school. David has spent quite some time at his high school, but still hasn't progressed socially. He's bullied relentlessly and sits along at his lunch table... until one day, a popular girl names Kit sits with him. They talk and find that the unexpected interaction leads to a friendship that not everyone supports. Will this improve David's life or put a bullseye on his back? There are elements of this book that I really enjoyed and others that made me roll my eyes. The elements that I enjoy ultimately outweighed what I didn't, but that didn't make the bad ones go away. It almost made me more annoyed they were there in the first place. This book has dual narrative between David and Kit. Each one has their own struggle internally and this writing style allows the opportunity to better get perspective on each one. It also gives you the headspace of what it's like to think differently than others with David and the chance to see what it's like not to judge others too quickly in Kit. Kit gets that David is unusual and accepts it instead of judging it. She realizes that he is a good guy at his core. We need more of that. The unfortunate aspects are a few. First, we see a lot of male Autistic representation. The story seemed like a great format for a female Autistic here and I kept finding myself wishing that was the format used. I also didn't like that they took how David looked, updated his style, and suddenly people at his school saw him. Seriously? It felt a bit too much like a teen movie subplot to me. A story with hear centered around an unexpected friendship. My rating: 4 out of 5