Review: Something More by Jackie Khalilieh

Posted September 20, 2024 by Lola in Contemporary, Review, Romance / 2 Comments

Something More
by Jackie Khalilieh

My Rating: 3 stars

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age Category: Young Adult
Type of romance: m/f

Blurb:
A contemporary teen romance novel featuring a Palestinian-Canadian girl trying to hide her autism diagnosis while navigating her first year of high school, for fans of Jenny Han and Samira Ahmed.

Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make a fresh start and keep her diagnosis a secret, Jessie creates a list of goals that range from acquiring two distinct eyebrows to getting a magical first kiss and landing a spot in the school play. Within the halls of Holy Trinity High, she finds a world where things are no longer black and white and quickly learns that living in color is much more fun. But Jessie gets more than she bargained for when two very different boys steal her heart, forcing her to go off-script.

My Review

I received a free copy from the publisher through Netgalley and voluntarily reviewed it.

Ever since finding out I am autistic I’ve been on the lookout for books featuring neurodivergent characters, so I jumped on the chance to read and review this one. Something More follows Jessie who starts high school, she wants to make a fresh start and decides to hide her autism diagnosis.

This is going to be a bit of a tough review to write. I really wanted to love this book and it has some really well done parts. It kept me reading and wanted to know what would happen next, but more because of the drama and the way it was written than that I really enjoyed this book. It made me feel uncomfortable at times as well. And partly it was just tough reading about an autistic highschooler as it reminded me of a time in my life that I have very mixed and conflicted feelings about and when I was struggling as an undiagnosed autistic. And while Jessie is plenty of different from me, there are also parts that hit pretty close to home, a bit too close at times. And it all just made it hard for me to fully enjoy this book. I am glad I finished it and the ending and message at the end was great, but it just leaves me with mixed feeling.

I thought it was interesting how this book spans the whole first year of Jessie’s high school. And a lot happens. It speeds up and takes some time jumps at times and then slows down again, but I did appreciate how this shows how much can happen in a year.

Jessie felt very realistic and relatable, although at times I wished to know even more of her or be even closer in her head. I feel like there is still so much I don’t know about her and then there are things like her family and their lives playing on around her, but not getting as much page time so they just kinda pop in and out sometimes and I just felt I would’ve liked something more.

Reading about Jessie and how she experiences life as an autistic girl was interesting. I had expected this book to be more about her being autistic, but it feels more like it’s about her life and her being autistic is part of that than the focus. And I think that’s totally fine, just wasn’t what I had expected. I wanted to see more autistic traits and more of her struggles at times. Like toward the end there is this random mention of her struggling through tests, but throughout the book this is never mentioned. And at the other hand I feel the autistic parts that were shown felt pretty spot on and relatable.

I also appreciated seeing Jessie grow and change through the book. Although her realizations and thoughts at the end did feel a bit sudden and would’ve liked a bit more build-up toward that. I also would’ve liked to see more of her experience being a diagnosed autistic in high school as I myself went through that phase of my life undiagnosed, but as she’s basically hiding it from most people there isn’t as much about that as I wanted. I wanted more of her insights and thoughts about her being autistic, but there isn’t much about that either.

This book has a pretty unique and fresh feeling love triangle, but it is still a love triangle and I didn’t like it. As a reader it was obvious who she would end up, but Jessie doesn’t see that. Again I think that felt very in-character and realistic as she is the one going through her life. But it just felt tedious at times seeing her with this one guy when I knew she would end up with the other one. There were also parts of her relationship with that guy that made me feel uncomfortable at times. And there was just so much drama, not only with her own romance, but also her friend group and their romances. It just was a bit too much for me.

To summarize: I really wanted to like this book, but it never fully worked for me. It kept me captivated and I wanted to keep reading, but more due to the drama and the way it was written, than because I really enjoyed it. I thought Jessie felt very realistic and relatable, but that was also one of the reasons I sometimes struggled reading this book as it reminded me of my own struggles through high school. There is a lot of drama, which was a bit much for me as I don’t like reading about that. There also is a love triangle, which I am not a fan of, although it was handled in a way that felt fresh. For me as reader it was obvious who she would end up with and didn’t enjoy the scenes with the other guy. The ending is well done and I liked how it wrapped things up.