9 Books with Autism Representation

9 Books Monday is a feature here on Bookish Wanderess, where I talk about 9 books that have positive representation of diverse experiences including the experiences of people of the LGBTQIA community, Native people, people of color, people with physical and cognitive disabilities or mental illnesses, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities.

In the past, I have done posts about 9 book with: Bisexual female mc, Latinx mc, Black mc, Muslim mc, Lesbian mc, Asian mc, Trans mc, and Anxiety rep. (mc=main characters).

This time I’m doing 9 books with Autism Representation:

3 Books I Read and Loved

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

The autistic rep in this is #ownvoices and it’s insightful and touching. Stella is succeseful and caring, she fixates on routines and obsesses over things and sometimes misses some social cues and she is wonderful and I loved getting to read from her perspective. The love interest is a soft boy which is rare in romance, he is a biracial Vietnamese/Swedish man and the Vietnamese rep is #ownvoices as well. Also, there’s some really steamy scenes in this.

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

This book is really geeky and it has so much diversity.  One of the main characters, Taylor, is on the autism spectrum and has severe anxiety, and the other, Charlie, is a bisexual Chinese-Australian girl. There’s a lovely romantic relationship between Taylor and one of her best friends, and they are just the nerdiest, sweetest pair ever.  I really liked that this didn’t focus only in the hard parts of being Autistic, but also showed the good parts, because I feel that as much as the hard parts needs to be shown, we also need fluffy books about Aspie girls.

Are You Seeing Me? by Darren Groth 

This story is about Australian twins. Perry is Autistic and Justine is his main caregiver, this is told in dual perspective so we get to hear from both Perry and Justine and they are both wonderful and they just love each other so much and I just wanted to cry over it. The author actually has twins, a son and a daughter just like in the story, and his son is Autistic and he wrote the book for them, which is really sweet. I really liked the fact that this felt pretty realistic the entire time, it was happy and sad at the same time and I think it handled that balance very well. (#ownvoices review)

4 Books on My TBR 

 

On The Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis 

This book has #ownvoices Autism rep, the main character is biracial black autistic girl and her sister is trans bisexual Black girl. Also, it’s a Sci-Fi/Dystopia book, which I think it’s amazing since I haven’t heard of that many SFF books that have Autistic main characters.

 

Things I Should Have Known by Claire LaZebnik

This focuses on siblings relationships, which I love, and it’s one of the main reasons I want to read this. There are two sisters, one of them is an Austitic girl and the other is basically her main caretaker, and then there’s two brothers, one of them also has ASD and the other is the main person caring for him. I have heard that this book shows a lot of positive sides of Autism, but it also has a very realistic depiction of ableism that can be hard to handle. (#ownvoices review)

 

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork 

The main character in a Latinx autistic boy and the Latinx rep is #ownvoices. He has gone to a school for disabled kids his whole life and suddenly he has to adjust to working at his dad’s law firm for the summer; I have heard this does a good job showing both the challenges he faces and his strengths in terms of the jobs he’s asked to do. (#ownvoices review)

 

When My Heart Joins the Thoysand by A.J. Steiger 

The main character of this story is an Autistic girl and her love interest suffer from a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta, which basically means that his bones break easily, and also he has PTSD caused by familial abuse.  I’m really excited to read this because I have heard that it’s very sex positive and discusses consent and toxic masculinity in relation to sex and I just think that’s amazing and that more YA books need to included those topics! (#ownvoices review)

2 Books Releasing Soon 

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang 

After loving The Kiss Quotient, I’m can’t wait to read this one! This is about Khai, an Autistic Vietnamese-American man and Esme, a mixed race Vietnamise woman. Esme comes from Vietnam to meet Khai, who is a potential husband and who thinks that he can’t feel big, important emotions and then they meet and a relationship develops between them. Release date: May 7th 2019

 

The Boy Who Steals Hpuses by C.G. Drews 

This book has #ownvoices Autism rep! Acording to the author there’s a hufflepuff autistic boy in this book and his brother (who’s the main character) is his main caregiver and there’s also anxiety rep and a big loud messy family and a feminist love interest who takes no nonsense and will smite you. So this sounds fantastic and I can’t wait to read it! Release date: April 4th 2019

 

What books with Autism rep have you read and loved? Which ones are on your tbr? Do you know of any fantasy or Sci-Fi books with Autism rep? 

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