Skip to main content

Peta Lyre's Rating Normal by Anna Whateley is the Neurodiverse (and queer!) Tale we all Needed to Hear

"Lyrebirds don't just mimic. They make their own songs too, and dance to their own beats."


Peta Lyre's Rating Normal by Anna Whateley is my honest-to-god new favourite book. I feel in love with Peta and the way her brain works made so much sense to me. Novels like this one are the stories of the future, where neurotypical and straight are not the default. Peta is so much like me (and so many other readers) and by the end of the book I felt like I was her best friend.
Peta Lyre's Rating Normal is about a girl with ASD, ADHD and SPD and her journey of self-acceptance and learning to stop giving so much of a crap. It includes a wholesome skiing trip and an lgbt romance that we can all get behind.
This feel-good novel has such a wonderful message and I loved every page. Peta is a character that I can finally relate to and Anna Whateley portrayed neurodiversity in a positive and proud light that made autism seem so much simpler and more familiar to the reader. When I finished the book I was a little bit heartbroken to be back in the real world again, but I know I will come back to Peta time and time again and my copy of Peta Lyre's Rating Normal will become well-worn and loved even more each time I read it. 


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Delights of Amelia Westlake by Erin Gough

"Mondays never fail to suck, but this one sucks harder than most." Erin Gough's 'Amelia Westlake' is the inclusive (but not ridiculously cliched and unnecessarily problematic like most LGBTQ+ novels jumping on the pride bandwagon just for the hell of it), witty and hilariously tender YA novel we have all been hoping for. I have nothing but praise for this sublimely sincere joy of a story. Amelia Westlake is an impeccably written tale of awkward outsider Will Everhart and her complete opposite; beloved school captain Harriet Price. When fate throws them together, they form an unexpected and atypical friendship that leads to rebellious shenanigans and, eventually, an intense will-they-get-together-PLEASE-JUST-GET-TOGETHER-ALREADY couple of chapters (a feature of any respectable book). This was the kind of novel that can never be read too many times, and perfectly captures the essence of private girls' schools, and, furthermore, being queer in a private
Post a Comment
Read more

Why I Love All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

To be clear; I'm talking about the book. The movie was a grievous tragedy that broke the hearts of readers across the nation and, undoubtedly, the world. My copy of All the Bright Places is dog-eared and worn, with notes in the margins and glitter between the pages. It's been dropped in baths and squashed in schoolbags under textbooks that weigh more than any book ever should. It's been lost under beds and left in cars, but this story will always find its way back to me. When I first read All the Bright Places, I was thirteen and didn't know what it was like to be miserable, but I thought I'd seen it all and the way Theodore Finch recounted the "asleep" made me feel like I wasn't alone anymore. Violet's struggles became mine, and I felt Finch's pain with him. The words danced across the pages like nothing I'd ever read before, and I plunged myself into the reality Finch had been living. To me, that book was everything. Every time I re
Post a Comment
Read more