Okay, so I guess I'm reviewing this because I have a big issue with it and I don't see many people discussing it.

To preface, I'm not autistic myself, but I have a younger autistic brother and a couple of friend who are as well, so I'm well aware that my opinion on this is definitely not that relevant.

While the book is very well written and constructed in general, the representation of autistic characters is pretty bad. To begin with, both of them are children and, therefore, we only see them through the eyes of adults. There aren't any older autistic characters that are able to give us the perspective of what it means growing up autistic. These characters are always seen through their mothers, Elizabeth and Kitt, both of them are trying to find a "cure" for their boys.*

*Note here to say that autism doesn't need a cure because it's not a disease, thank you very much.

Elizabeth here is my biggest problem with this book. I understand that the novel tries to show her as having good intentions regarding her son, but everything she does sounds awful. And it's in relation to her that the book spreads shitty information about autism. There's a scene when the detective is being questioned about Elizabeth medically abusing her son (SHE WAS) and is asked about IV-chelation, which is FDA approved for mercury poisoning, and her lawyer defends her citing a study about rats being injected with thimerosal (which apparently made them show signs similar to autism, though the relation between thimerosal and autism has been widely proved to be false), where the rats became "better" after being treated (with something that is basically bleach). AND NOBODY FIGHTS THIS.

The only characters who challenge Elizabeth's position on autism (that it can ben cured) are the protestors, who are consistently presented as agressive and unempathetic with the suffering mothers of the children who are being subjected to medical treatment they don't need. The nuances of the situation are never explored, and Elizabeth is consistently presented as a suffering mother who only wants the best for her kid, but we never hear directly from Henry, the actually autistic kid.

And that's the main issue with this book. It spends so much time trying to make the mothers of these children empathetic, but zero time presenting the children as actual people, as opposed as moving props, which is what they are in this book.