Every cloud has a silver lining… doesn’t it? Anna is thirteen years old, lives in London with her father, and has Asperger’s syndrome.  When her father dies, she moves to Scotland to live with her estranged, reclusive mother.  With little support to help her  t in, she must use every coping strategy her father taught her—especially her ‘Happy Game’—as she tries to connect with her mother, discover her past, and deal with the challenges of being thrown into a brand new life along the way. 

The Rosie Synopsis

Thanks to Kelly, at Love Books Tours for organising this blog tour.

Anna has lost everything she knows and has to move to Scotland to live with her estranged mum. She starts to explore her new surroundings and make friends while trying to understand the new and different rules.

The Good

Anna is a really sweet kid and the relationships between Anna and her new companions are built with care. The emphasis on her sensory and perceptual differences as an autistic kid in a new environment and building new relationships is really helpful, and pretty much the centre of the story.

I found the development of her relationship with her mum painful but loving; it’s clear Anna’s mum is in a difficult situation and has a painful past, yet she’s doing her best to build a rapport with the child she hasn’t seen since she was a baby.

The writing is descriptive and I felt very immersed in the story at times.

The Not-So-Good

Some of the autistic stuff is exaggerated. I know we all experience being autistic differently and there’s a tendency for non-autistic people to not recognise autistic stuff unless you chuck it in their faces, but the writing could have been a bit subtler.

And there’s no way Anna got all the support she talks about having in London. Even kids in special schools don’t get that much support, let alone one being home-schooled by her dad. Support services are terribly limited.

The Verdict

It’s a lovely story, and I actually think it’s going to prove useful in teaching neurotypical people to understand autistic people a bit better. I would very much like to know if Laura Guthrie is autistic because there’s a lot of insight into autistic behaviour and thinking, although some of it is a bit stereotypical.

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Laura Guthrie

Laura Guthrie grew up in the rural Scottish Highlands (“I come from where the planes don’t fly”). Her creative influences include Nessie and the elusive ‘Caiplich Beast’, as well as some choice authors and their works. She has an honours degree in biological sciences from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Glasgow