2.5 stars, rounded up to 3

It's very hard to review this book, because while I was very happy to learn about DLD and I also recognize the intent of the author to make this disability more widely known by writing the book, at the same time it's also just... So, so badly edited.

And I'm not going to say badly written - the author is disabled in terms of speech and language, thought formation into words. It is a stunning job he did to even write the book. But should that mean that my standards for book reviews should drop? Not at all. Because books are made by teams of people. And I don't know whether the publishing of this book even HAD an editor, and if it did - well, now. I don't know what to say to you, Sir/Madam. You must've had your reasons.

Let me explain:

- up to page 65, roughly, the author talks about DLD as a disability, his childhood with it and while it has personal facts, it is mostly related to the disability and it was very interesting to read

- after page 151 the author talks about Afasic, the charity that helps people with DLD and the work he now does with them. Great topic. Interesting to learn. (Keep in mind that the references start at page 174, so it's a fairly short bit about Afasic.)

- however... Pages 66-150 (out of 184 in my edition) are just a lot of facts, in the vibe of "I took a class... I moved... I worked in a swimming pool... I took a class... I moved..." If I had to review the book minus the pages 65-151, it would be at least 4 stars, if not more. That is a lot of pages of something I can only call essentially a fact-by-fact resume.

It's hard to describe the infodumping, but had I bought this book and it wasn't a review copy, I would have definitely DNFed it. I made myself finish it to give a review. But I had to actively push myself through the middle bit and it was pretty hard going. I'm interested in your disability and how it has impacted your life, how you have persevered and grown in spite of it. I'm all for that! I am, however, incredibly uninterested in the types of cake you were choosing from for your wedding and which types you ended not buying, the myriad of classes with lists of their certifications you took (we are talking actual lists of CompTIA classes with their requirements and credits almost - IN BULLETS, to CISCO certifications and encyclopedia definitions of JavaScript, HTML and CSS, screenshots of coding projects) and the history of all the apartment neighbourhoods you lived in (in one chapter, the neighbourhood history bit took three pages.) I honestly don't even want to know all that stuff about some friends of mine. And I'm sure they don't want to know that about me either! So why would complete strangers want to read these facts about the author then? Especially when they are in no way connected to the disability, which is the topic of the book?

It was interesting learning about DLD, as it's not a commonly known disability that nonetheless affects many people around the world. DLD is when a person is born without the innate ability to learn language easily or even express their thoughts, although they do have the thoughts and are fully mentally capable. The author advocates for teaching children with language problems to be given help as early as possible, and stresses the importance of government funding for these sorts of things. The book mostly talks about Britain, but I believe it's just as important for any place in the world. The author himself is a success case of early diagnosis and treatment. The book has been proofread, but in some places you can see the slightly odd grammar, and I believe it was probably left there to be more genuine - and it really does convey and come together with what the author is telling us about the disability. I had no problem whatsoever with that. But I still do believe the book would have been so much better, had the middle part been edited or possibly even cut, or at least rephrased through the lens of "that's how DLD affected the author", because now it simply reads as "bloke in England lived and worked in these places and finished such an such courses", without seemingly having any connection to the theme or topic of the book. One great example of how to achieve great storytelling despite the author's disability might be the book by Lady Gaga's foundation - Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community. There were several stories written by people who had serious mental challenges (some had Down syndrome which makes it all the harder to write and voice your speech), but in the audiobook, these people read their own speeches, and despite having to listen slower due to speech impediments, their speeches were beautiful, touching and to the point. There wasn't anything unnecessary to them, and they were very graceful and interesting. It IS doable and it's simply delivering a quality product. It should be what we strive for - whether we need the help of our teams to deliver the end result, or not. If you want to spread the word about your disability, you still have to make the information approachable. I'm looking at you, Mr/Ms Editor.

All in all, though, of course it was interesting to read about the life experiences of someone with a vastly different set of abilities than most of us. It was interesting to read of the struggles and achievements, although I still find myself wishing to learn more about DLD as a disability. And like the author, I also wish it was more widely known, because then bigger amounts of research and development money would be going to the cause.

Huge respect for the author for writing the book, considering everything. What I was the most impressed with was that despite suffering from a disability related to language processing, the author ends up choosing a career of a web developer - which means coding in man-made synthetic languages. So he's basically tackling the bit that's probably the hardest to learn for his particular challenge! Mad props for that kind of dedication.

And I hope that my review doesn't come off as being rude, mean or ableist - I was trying to avoid that as much as possible, and remain respectful. Since my review has to be honest, I think I would be doing a great disservice to the author's disability too, if I simply said "well, it was badly edited, but I'll give it a great rating because the author has a disability." Please let me know if you think I was wrong in my opinion, or if I failed in remaining respectful. I apologize if it is so, and it was definitely not my intention.

I thank the publisher for giving me a free copy of the ebook in exchange to my honest review. This has not affected my opinion.

This book was okay, to bad. The story of a young boy with Developmental Language Disorder growing up and eventually running a charity was okay. I went in to this book hoping it would be great, like some of my others had been. It wasn’t.
Formatting 2 stars
Plot: 2.5 stars