Kids like us starts in a good fast paced way that leads the reader to appreciate that Martin is struggling with day to day life with autism and how that changes how he both sees the world and those he meets in it.

Unfortunately the pace of the story then wains and it feels like attempting the good work that went into building  a believable and loveable character is wasted with a slow and drifting story

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. There are other books, too. I could identify with the obsessive interests of Martin and Layla; I have an all-consuming interest in the Percy Jackson series. 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 in the context of Search 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. Kids Like Us is a book that makes you think, whether you are on or off the spectrum.

At the beginning I wasn’t very eager to read Kids Like Us and for my rating you may suspect that I was right to not to want to read it, but I want to clear some points about this book and why you should give it a chance.

First, I’m not very smart so title with great story like this one would pass a little boring for me.

The reason I decided to read Kids Like Us is because someone with autism said that this book had a great voice, that the characterization about how it is to live with autism is very accurate. And, even if I could see, sadly I couldn’t connect with Martin at all. I’m very literal, matter-of-kind- of persona, which is kinda ironic, I know, but It was really hard for me to believe that you could get such infatuation for someone because you think is the character of a book.

It’s not that I didn’t get the book, it just I didn’t connect. I could compare the way Martin see the world pairing with his book in the same way I did with words when I started learning English (which I know my skills are awful, I need to practice and learn a lot).

A heart warming, fast paced read. I usually have a lot of things to say in a review but I'm quite speechless at the moment.

Brilliantly told story of an American boy with high-functioning autism filtering his first love through the lens of a classic French novel.

Moving on. I'm not really qualified to comment as to how accurate a depiction this was of a person with autism, but it provided a fascinating perspective on the MC, Martin's life. He goes to a school for kids with neurodivergent/developmental differences/autism...? It's not quite clear, but they seem to have a special program for teaching these kids how to learn and communicate with others more effectively. Martin and a friend from the program both understand the world by comparing people and experiences to a beloved piece of media. In Martin's case, it's a classic French novel. In his friend's, it's the TV show Downton Abbey.

I enjoyed the way Martin was portrayed as deliberately thinking through his surroundings and choosing to respond. It was a bit surprising in the first few pages, but then felt very comfortable and surprisingly relatable. In the story, he's visiting a French town and attending school there on a casual basis while his mother films a movie in town. He struggles with the new situation and new people, but works out relationships mostly by helping others and examining their reactions for insight into why they act a certain way. He enjoys translating for his friends, finding meaning, purpose and acceptance while overcoming anxiety in the act. He struggles, like many children, with his impact on his parent's lives and relationship, feeling guilt for being different and creating conflict and challenges in their lives. 

He falls for a local girl who he regards as equivalent to the heroine of his favourite book, and while it takes a while for him to separate his fantasy from reality, he is capable of thinking through the differences and seeing her as unique. In a way, it's a very quiet story about Martin's journey of understanding and relating to the world around him, but satisfying in the way it concludes and entertaining in that the world told in Martin's voice is intricate, interesting and challenging. 

A satisfying story that lets you experience the world through a distinctive lens. 4/5 as entertainment, 5/5 as a very well produced book.

This is a heartwarming story. It'll immerse you in Martin's world giving you a feeling of being in a film but a very delightful one to be in. It grows on you. Thank you NetGalley, I read this and loved the prose.

I will be pretty surprised if this doesn't end up being a pretty popular YA fiction title. 

This story is primarily about Martin, a fairly high functioning 16 year old boy with autism. Initially, the story feels a little stilted spoken inside Martin's head, but, gains more fluidity as you continue through the story. The teens are smart and cultured, a bit like John Green's teens. 

Martin has a bit of an obsession going on with Proust and thus there are tons of reference to Proust. Thankfully though, Martin is primarily reading Swann's Way, not the entire "In Search of Lost Time" so if you feel like reading the 2 books concurrently, it should actually be achievable. There's even several references to madeleines and Cesar Franck's Violin Sonata in A Major.

This is one of those books where you can choose to focus on the relationships theme or the 'book within a book' theme. 

I liked this enough to read it all in one day, that's saying something. It does warm up quickly in just a few chapters, so if you are lukewarm on chapter one, continue until at least chapter three to give it a chance to grow on you.