obscurastrange's reviews
166 reviews

I wish I’d found this book when I was first diagnosed. Although this book covers a huge range of topics, perhaps a little too many as I found the last few chapters to be a bit difficult to get through and too wide reaching and not specific enough. The majority of this book was a wonderful, informative, and reflective read. 

I really enjoy the way this book is structured, it’s very autism friendly with key points that will be discussed in each chapter. There is rarely heavy walls of text, and there is lots of reflective and personal descriptions throughout which helped me to put context to the text. Specifically the way in which the author talks about sensory issues, and plans to tackle them, while thinking about all the different types of sensory input was so incredibly useful. I’ve highlighted and book marked huge chunks of this book to come back to and create personal sensory/meltdown/shutdown/regulation plans from. 

I do think the author wanted to touch a lot of bases, and make sure everything that an autistic person or family member reading this could possibly experience. But I found her strongest work to be in the first half of this book when it was very reflective and had a lot of personal context. The last chapters in particular about Therapy and Mental Health were very wide reaching and didn’t hold the same spark that the first half of the book had. 

However, I really enjoyed this book, and found the great majority of it extremely useful and reflective. I wish I’d found this book when I was first diagnosed as the information and methods to deal with sensory experiences, overwhelm, shutdowns, and the like were incredibly useful! 

A Kind of Spark is one of my favourite books, and so of course I had to read the Prequel ‘Keedie’. 

I related a lot to the character Keedie and her experience in this book because being autistic myself I have a very strong sense of justice and hatred for bullies. I’ve been told that in primary school and nursery school I ‘bullied the bullies’ because I couldn’t deal with the unfairness of their behaviour. So I really relate to Keedie’s mission in this book, and I love the way it’s explored, flaws and all. 

Elle McNicoll’s books are truly healing for an adult autistic who never got to read books with openly autistic characters as a child. Even if you’ve never had interest in a middle grade book but you’re autistic I suggest reading her books because they are so healing for my autistic younger self, and I appreciate that incredibly! 

The Garden by Nick Newman is a dystopian gothic story about two elderly sisters who live in a secluded walled garden, cut off from the outside world, which is much changed. The sisters have been hidden away from the goings on of the dystopian and somewhat desolate world outside, scared and forbidden to venture beyond the garden’s walls. They spend day after day working on maintaining the garden, and the life that they have built there since childhood. But one day, they find a boy hiding in the boarded up house, and their secluded world of peaceful monotony is turned on its head. 

This book was utterly wonderful, I was drawn to it by the premise, a walled garden in a dystopian world. The sisters living a secluded, idyllic but sheltered life nestled within a potentially dangerous dystopia. This sounded like a fairytale spin on the dystopian genre, and it really was! But more than that this book was a meditation on trauma and grief. It poignantly explored the rituals and systems we set up for ourselves, or that are set up for us by a loved one, to avoid having to face heartache and trauma. The stories we tell ourselves to maintain some control over the heartbreaking and difficult aspects of life, and that allow us to navigate and cope with them, or avoid coping with them. It emotionally shows the way in which rituals, such as working on the garden and maintaining their life, can act as the life ring that keeps us from sinking into grief. It also does a wonderful job of exploring sisterhood, and family relations which depend on a duty to one another, sometimes to a detriment, and the fallout that entails. It explores family relationships, and dutiful bonds, the difficulties, and problems with sheltering loved ones, and  the grief you feel for the life you chose to live, and the life you could have picked, and the grief of the in between. 

This is an incredibly well written book, with poignant and reflective topics that are dealt with in an emotional and careful way. 

If you like dystopian books, but are looking for a meaningful and gothic twist, this is a great read for you. Similarly if you like books that tackle emotions, family bonds, sisterhood, and the unknown and are looking for something a little different, this is a wonderful read that I highly recommend. 

Pick this up if you like: gothic fairytale, dystopia, sisterhood, grief, beauty in the mundane, coping with trauma, books with women, books with older women. 

Thank you to NetGalley, the Author & Publisher for providing me with an ARC for this book in exchange for an honest review. 

This was such a wonderful read! I really enjoyed learning about all the different ghostly characters from different areas, and the links to local culture and history. 
Such a fabulous book, and really well written, you can tell the author cares a lot about the subject and portraying the people and their stories well. It’s a book that you can dip in and out of, and perfect for spooky season, or simply for those of us who are inclined to the darker and spookier side of life.

A very grateful thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review,