A very enjoyable and engaging young adult spec fic book. I'm an autistic reader/writer and always keen to see quality representation of autistic characters. I liked the worldbuilding and enjoyed the emotional arc of the main character; it felt very believable. Hopefully the author wlil write other similar novels (it took me ages to catch up to this one so I haven't checked yet.)

The Place Inside the Storm takes place in the near future, 2038, where the word Autism has been deleted from dictionaries and published papers. Tara is a 14 years old girl who is extremely intelligent and struggles to make friendships. Her only current friend is Xel, an AI that looks like a cat. Her parents moved to LA for better job opportunities, higher salaries, and hopefully better lives for Tara and her sister. But then the corporation her parents work at made them choose between inserting an implant in Tara’s brain to make her neurotypical and losing their jobs. Tara doesn’t wait for her parents to take their decisions and decides to run away with Xel.

When Bradley reached out for me to read and review this book and mentioned it was own voices for neurodiversity, I automatically said yes. We don’t get a lot of good neurodiverse representation in YA, and we rarely get ones that are own voices. The Place Inside the Storm is a coming of age, dystopian story of a girl named Tara, who goes on a journey of self-discovery and learns more about neurodiversity and embraces it throughout the story. I pretty much teared up towards the end of the story and highlighted multiple consecutive pages.

I really loved the amount of emotion and well written characters embedded in the storyline. The plot itself is very unique, but the characterization stood out the most. Tara’s voice is so unique, and powerful that it could carry the entire weight of what makes this book so good! I also loved the display of acknowledgment and respect in certain chapters. I really hope humans in real life learn more about humanity and embrace diverse people instead of erasing their voices.

Now, I am not autistic, so I unable to 100% spot any problematic content in the book or even properly highlight what makes The Place Inside the Storm an important, amazing read. So I highly recommend you check out my dear friend’s ( Rachel from the Graceful Goddess) review.

As I write this review, I am being hit with an overwhelming need to contact Bradley to guest post for my WHY I WRITE series, so we’ll see how that goes. Also, stay tuned for this month’s Quotes I devoured this month to see a glimpse of what made me cry.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then feel free to grab your copy here! This is an affiliate link so I might get a commission if you decide to make any purchases.

Till next time,

Ayah

I try to avoid YA but gave this a try. Decent story with good character development. Not disappointed.

As dystopian stories go, The Place Inside the Storm is an average read. The plot is intriguing. The characters are likeable. Overall, however, something is missing. Perhaps the story line could have been tighter and the characters more substantial. Overall an okay read. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not sure what this book was trying to be. The plot seemed to be all over the place. Was it a scifi or a dystopian? I loved the idea of AI pets and Xel the cat was the character who shined the brightest.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review The Place Inside the Storm.

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