I’m not sure where I heard of this book but I remember why I wanted to read it: Marcelo has a cognitive disorder, which resembles Asperger’s syndrome. Since my brother is on the autism spectrum, I wanted to read more books which had characters that represent him.

Marcelo has a pretty comfortable life at the start of the book. Human interaction doesn’t come naturally to him but he likes his school and he’s looking forward to his summer job taking care of horses. However, his father comes to him with an ultimatum: take a summer job at his law firm or transfer to a public school. If Marcelo can survive the real world, he can stay in his school and take care of horses for the long term. And so, Marcelo ends up working in the mailroom of his father’s law firm, where he has to deal with Wendell, the other partner’s obnoxious son, and Jasmine, who manages him.

This book was amazing and broke my heart in so many ways. Not that this story is tragic, but Marcelo’s struggles are the same struggles that I see my brother going through all the time. Even though Marcelo is in a supportive environment, his first steps in the ‘real world’ come with quite a lot of unkindness and prejudice from others. That was heartbreaking enough, but the fact that Marcelo really reminded me of my brother made the impact so much stronger on me. Every little thing he felt or went through made me think of my little brother and the ever-present worry on how he is going to integrate into society.

Obviously, I don’t have to spend too long on this, but I loved Marcelo’s character. I know he’s written as similar to, but not exactly the same as someone with ASD, but there were so many similarities that I think of him as representative of people with ASD who are high-functioning. Although I can’t speak from the #ownvoices perspective, as someone who is related to several people with ASD and has some experience interacting with them on a daily basis, the characterisation of Marcelo rings true.

Apart from Marcelo, there were quite a few other characters. Jasmine was great and a good guide as Marcelo navigates the real world, while Wendell was an excellent foil to her. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about how a subplot involving Wendell and Jasmine was resolved (or rather, not resolved), but I appreciated the way they interacted with Marcelo and gave him different views of human nature while coming off as realistic characters. Well, Wendell was a bit more stereotypically written, but he’s the type of antagonist that’s fun to hate.

The plot was pretty interesting too. The first half is spent on Marcelo getting used to life in his dad’s law firm, but once Marcelo comes across the photo of a girl with half a face (which is mentioned in the blurb so this is not a spoiler), the mystery of who she is and how she’s connected to the firm started to pick up and ended rather satisfyingly.

Overall, this was an amazing book, definitely one of the top books of the year. I’d recommend this to people not so much for the story, but for the amazing characters. If you’d like to get into the head of someone with ASD (or something very much like ASD), this is a book that you’ll need to read.