One is a fifteen-year-old boy with an uncanny ability to recite every bone in the skeletal system whenever he gets anxious ― and that happens a lot. The meaning of “appropriate behaviour” mystifies him: he doesn’t understand most people and they certainly don’t understand him.
The other is a graduating senior with the world at her feet. Joining the Best Buddies club at her school and pairing up with a boy with high-functioning autism is the perfect addition to her med school applications. Plus, the president of the club is a rather attractive, if mysterious, added attraction.
Told in the alternating voices of Harrison and Anna, Fragile Bones is the story of two teens whose lives intertwine in unexpected ways. -Goodreads
-
I've always been interested in Autism and other neurological and personality disorders and because of that, I've always loved reading books on the subject (okay only fiction books for now). So I was very happy to receive a copy of this book to read and review.
This book follows Harrison, who has autism, and Anna, the girl who befriends him. I really enjoyed this quick and simple read. In fact I cried a bit at some parts. I thought this book was really lovely. In fact, I was originally planning to give it a good old 5 stars.
BUT
I saw a review that someone else had made on the book. It wasn't a very good review of the book but I like reading both good and bad reviews of a book especially before I review a book so that I can be objective. So I saw this review and in it, the person mentioned that she didn't really learn anything new about autism and that everything was told very superficially and that even Harrison's parts were not as deep as she hoped they would be.
That got me thinking. I didn't learn anything new about autism through this book and yes, it was a very surface level kind of book. While I did feel that I understood people with autism better, I felt like I didn't get to really know as much as I would have liked from this book. If I saw a boy in the streets walking in circles and flapping his arms, I might be sympathetic but I wouldn't really understand him very well. Going into a book like this, one would hope to be able to look at that boy on the streets and understand the struggles that he goes through on a deeper level. It felt like Nicholson simply saw this boy and wrote about him with less research then one would expect from a book of this caliber.
I also felt like the romance thing was a bit forced. I felt that Justin and Anna could have stayed friends. It might have made the story even more impactful. But instead the love story made the book just a tad cheesy. Just a tad.
Overall, this was a great read however if you are hoping to learn a great deal more about autism, maybe this book won't be for you. However I urge everyone to pick up this book because as surface as it is, it does help us empathise with someone who has a neurological disability and I think everyone needs to be aware of how they can help and how they can contribute to making a disabled person's life just a tad easier.
-
My Rating: 4/5 stars*This book was given to me to read and review by the publishers*
Purchase the books at The Book Depositary using my special link Here.
No comments:
Post a Comment