Reviews with content warning for Ableism - A Kind of Spark

Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll

118 reviews

nbreezy17's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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pendularsand's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Did I read this all in one day? Hell yeah I did bc it was fantastic.

Never ever have I seen the internal monologue of a protagonist and thought, “she’s just like me, she understands” so many times that it brought me to tears.

Too many of her experiences were unfortunately exactly like mine and although it’s sad that autistic people have such universally shit experiences, it really made me happy to see it written down in a published book like??? People can just read this and know how it feels and know what it’s like and that’s AWESOME!! More of this please!

I love Addie so much <33

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augustreadsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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tashtash93's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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lottie1803's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

As a late diagnosed Autistic, this is the book younger me needed. I laughed and cried within pages of each other.

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sleepyshelves's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

I still have so many feelings, and the longer I sit with them the more intimidating writing a review becomes.

Addie is autistic; she loves sharks (did you know they can sense electricity????) and she loves words (she carries a pocket thesaurus her sister gave her with her everywhere). She really just loves to learn. When her class starts learning about witches, she can’t help that she needs to know everything she can – these women who were killed for being different resonate with her in a way that no one in her class seems to understand, including her teacher. She immediately begins to lobby for a memorial for the women she’s come to relate with. But her town won’t take her seriously, in fact, they seem to blame her “poor behavior” on her sister.

An earnest examination of the treatment of autistic children, A Kind of Spark doesn’t shy away from the way adults and kids alike bully their autistic peers. What starts as a simple, honest plea for recognition turns into a fight against the greater population of her small town, and McNicoll’s dedicated, compassionate voice fills each page, uplifting Addie and Keedie with a transparency that comes from personal connections. I can’t find the correct words to articulate the impact of such a straightforward story.

Not generally a huge fan of contemporary work, I was floored by how compulsively I was reading McNicoll’s debut. I’m now confronted with the obstacle of the prequel (Keedie, Addie’s older sister, is also autistic and has her own story coming out) being released in the UK and not in the US. Reading this book has had profound reverberations through my personal life in the past few weeks since.

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