The State of Grace

by Rachael Lucas

Whip-smart, hilarious and unapologetically honest, The State of Grace by Rachael Lucas is a heart-warming story of one girl trying to work out where she fits in, and whether she even wants to.

Sometimes I feel like everyone else was handed a copy of the rules for life and mine got lost.

Grace is autistic and has her own way of looking at the world. She's got a horse and a best friend who understand her, and that's pretty much all she needs. But when Grace kisses Gabe and things start to change at home, the world doesn't make much sense to her any more. Suddenly everything threatens to fall apart, and it's up to Grace to fix it on her own.

• ISBN10: 1250129982
• ISBN13: 9781250129987
• Publish Date: 21 August 2018 (first published 6 April 2017)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 September 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St Martin's Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 224
• Language: English

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

I was really curious about this book for several reasons. I was eager to read an #OwnVoices YA romance featuring a character with ASD, as this is not something I see often, and I must say, my experience was rather wonderful. NOTE: I have read a ton of reviews from reviewers with ASD, and all approved of the rep.

• Pro: I'd be hard pressed to find a person out there, who didn't fall in love with Grace. She was funny, smart, and really honest. Her commentary on most situations left me smiling and sometimes even laughing out loud. She didn't always do everything right, but she always tried her best and had good intentions. I know I was rooting for her.

• Pro: I wasn't surprised to read that Lucas was autistic and also, the mother of an autistic child, because Grace's emotions regarding her autism came across as wholly authentic. Not only did I get keen insight into her feelings, but Lucas also shared some many important ideas about autism and people with autism.

• Pro: The romance was so adorable. The nerdy conversations and awkwardness kept me grinning, and all those firsts were terribly sweet. So, yeah, I shipped them. I would have loved to get to know Gabe a little better, but what I did see was pretty wonderful.

• Pro: Grace's grandma was a pretty awesome human. Her love and acceptance of Grace was really beautiful, and she just was so in tune with her.

• Pro: The friendship between Anna and Grace was lovely. Anna was really supportive, and had an understanding of Grace's needs. It pained me, when Grace would question why someone like Anna would be her friend, because it was obvious that Anna loved Grace dearly and also got lots of their relationship.

• Pro: Lucas did a beautiful job conveying Grace's state of mind. In the part where she was really stressed, the words whipped me about and pulled me into her emotional state. She also deftly illustrated how much effort it took for Grace to adapt to neurotypical expectations.

Overall: This was a terribly sweet, heartwarming, and touching story of a neurodiverse girl in a neurotypical world, which was told with humor, honesty, and quite a bit of positivity.

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

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[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

Before reading The State of Grace by Rachael Lucas, I had yet to read a book featuring a protagonist on the autism spectrum before. There are a few out, but not a huge amount, and only one other that I know of that is #OwnVoices, so I was really excited for The State of Grace, as it sounded like a really awesome story, and Grace has Asperger's syndrome. Unfortunately, I don't think this story really was for me.

Let's start with the positives. We all know #OwnVoices stories are written for those who rarely see themselves in the pages of the books they read, of if they are, not necessarily represented all that accurately. So, The State of Grace isn't for me. However, I did learn more about what it's like for people with Asperger's syndrome; how overwhelming a person can be by everything going on around them, how important structure and routine is, how it can sometimes be difficult to understand what other people mean. It was great getting that insight into something I've not completely understood before, and also knowing I can trust the representation. What was also, great, though, is that this isn't a book about having autism, it's just about the life of a girl who has it. Grace's autism does come up a lot, because it plays into how she sees, reacts and acts in the world, but it's not really the focus of the story.

And it's the story itself that I have a problem with. Because what the focus of the story is, I'm not really sure. There's a boy, Gabe, that Grace likes, who likes her back, and they go on a few dates. Grace is bullied a little by the popular girl in her class, and feels like she's weird and strange a lot, and wants to be more "normal". There are some problems at home because her dad, who is a wildlife camera man, is often away a lot, this being one of those times - and this time round, her mum isn't coping so well. Grace's mum is also back in touch with an old uni friend, who has a lot of opinions on how she lives her life, and how much her children should (or rather, shouldn't) depend on her, and puts all sorts of ideas in her head. She's rude, and she's completely ignorant to Grace's needs, and her mum just seems to selfishly go along with it. This part of the story was actually really well done, because I was so mad at Grace's mum. I could understand that life is maybe not so easy, and with Grace's father having the job he has, a lot of the time she is the one who has to look after her children and doesn't have much of a life of her own, but the way Eve was influencing her, it was like she simply didn't care anymore, and would force Grace into doing things that really upset her. It wasn't just selfish, but harmful and inconsiderate, and she had me fuming. But overall, there wasn't one main plot thread, just several smaller ones.

And, if I'm honest, I wasn't really pulled into the story. I wasn't exactly interested it. Grace, her friend Anna, even Gabe and the other boys, all seemed pretty young. Really, there was no difference in maturity between Grace and her friends and her younger sister Leah, who's 13. I know it's only three years age difference, but there's still a difference between how 13-year-olds act, and how 16-year-olds do. And this isn't down to Grace's Asperger's syndrome, because her friends were the same. As well as being little young, I don't feel I got to know many of the characters very well, and they felt under-developed to me. Kind of two-dimensional. The story was just kind of flat, until the pretty big deal that happens near the end, and even that comes completely out of left field. Grace suddenly has an idea, goes for it, and things go pear-shaped in a big way. But before that... I guess it was just a snapshot of Grace's life where nothing all that interesting happens, because we don't see much of very much. The only character I feel like I know is Grace.

And I also found that I didn't relate to her. Not because she's autistic, but because of the life she lives. She is middle class, whereas I'm not. Which is fine, I've read books with characters who are middle class before, and I was still able to find something there to relate to, even if they live a very different life to me. But there was nothing with Grace. She was very young 16-year-old, which was a gap of it's own, but there was also a distancing, in regards to her having a horse she rode every day, and all the training for Tennis her sister had. As I said, this in itself is not a problem, but it's just the way it was told, I guess, that put up a barrier between Grace's Middle Class life, and my own Working Class life.

I'm afraid to say I didn't like this book very much. But I think most of that is down to personal taste rather than anything else. Do read other reviews before deciding whether or not to give this book a go.

Thank you to Macmillan Children's Books via NetGalley for the eProof.

[Joséphine]

Note: I received an advanced reading copy from a local distributor in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Initial thoughts: I really liked The State of Grace. While I've had friends with Asperger's Syndrome/autism, and knew that they struggled with social interactions, I didn't realise how drained they could feel at the end of the day. Reading this book based on the author's own experiences gave me a greater insight into such experiences. It was interesting seeing things through Grace's perspective, how she processed her surroundings, as well as her general thought processes. I also loved her friendship with Anna, and how she found solace with her horse, Mabel. The plot itself was pretty straight-forward, though there still were some parts that gave rise to plenty of excitement.