A wonderful book with well written characters. Even the side characters are well developed! Our heroine has some hearing loss., but not many people notice. This begins to make her feel like she is distancing herself from part of herself. She never uses sign in her day to day life, even with her family.
She remembers that the last time she felt completely accepted was as a child in summer camp, so she decides to become a camp counselor over summer vacation. She can earn some money and brush up on her ASL. What she doesn't expect is to find herself. During her stay she learns more about herself and how to make her place in the outside world.
This was a truly amazing book! I learned so much and I am so grateful to #netgalley, #penguingroup and Anna Sortino, who is a brilliant author,

I really enjoyed learning more about the Deaf community while reading this book! It was very insightful while still being entertaining. I definitely recommend this!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced digital copy of this book.

Okay but incredibly slow to build. I understand why it focuses on the ableism but a lot of the story felt purposely focused on miscommunication and never clarifying more. Which, I get, when advocating can be exhausting.

dnf for now because I don’t think I have the energy or the will to get through any romance books right now BUT I did really enjoy what I read so I will come back to it when romance interests me again!

Unfortunately, I just didn't get to this one on my list. It looks like a great story and I hope to get to it later but it wasn't high enough on my priorities.

Beautiful debut about belonging and finding who you are. Addresses the nuances of deaf culture and what is means to be disabled.

This incredibly sweet and impossibly charming novel is an absolute delight to read. A summer romance, a coming of age, and a journey to understand oneself, it follows Lilah in her journey at summer camp to delve into knowing herself, her history, and who she wants to become. It’s always a joy to uncover a new debut author who’s just rocking it with their writing, and Sortino fits the bill. Her characters are relatable and reflective of teens today. Though each character is on their own journey, they come together at Camp Grey Wolf to unite and build friendships and community, while also learning more about ASL and Deaf culture.

Lilah is someone who falls in the middle. Her hearing loss isn’t entire, but it’s enough that it makes day-to-day life in the mainstream a constant and tiring challenge. To get through the week, she’s having to explain herself, sit silently in passive acceptance of being out of the loop, or withstand the constant spotlight of requesting accommodation. She often feels too Deaf to fit in with the hearing community, but not “deaf enough” to fit in with those who’s hearing loss is much more severe than her own. In this grey area, she’s begun to feel lost and misguided, not knowing where she belongs. Camp Grey Wolf is a camp she attended as a child and her return there could be just the thing to help her uncover her own passions and direction.

At it’s heart, this is a story of friendship, self-love, community, acceptance, and identity. It’s packed full of great characters, beautiful connections, and incredible self-growth. I absolutely recommend this story for this summer and I think that many readers will love this story as much as I did.

Give Me a Sign
by Anna Sortino
Pub Date 11 Jul 2023
PENGUIN GROUP Penguin Young Readers Group |G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
Teens & YA


⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Penguin GROUP, Penguin Young Readers, and Netgalley have provided me with a copy of Give Me a Sign for review:


Lilah is caught in the middle. That's how having a hearing loss feels sometimes-when you don't feel "deaf enough" to identify as Deaf or hear enough to meet the world's expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change.


She plans to brush up on her ASL when she becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind. Her community also awaits her once she arrives. As well as cute British lifeguards who break hearts but not rules, a YouTuber who's desperate for exposure, Lilah's campers (and overwhelmed by them)-and Isaac, the dreamy Deaf counselor who volunteers to teach Lilah sign language.




Lilah doesn't think Isaac likes her that way, and romance wasn't on the agenda. However, all signs point to love. Unless she's misreading them? One thing’s for sure: Lilah wanted change, and things here . . . they're certainly different than what she’s used to.As for Lilah, she wanted change, and things here . . . they're certainly different from what she's used to.


I give, Give Me A Sign five out of five stars!


Happy Reading!

This was a great debut YA novel, that I really liked reading!

I received an e-ARC from the publisher

This was such a cute read. I loved the identity crisis the main character was going through. I related a bit in language barriers angle of the story. Like the main character, I wish I spoke a language I "should" know. I think the ending came off a bit rushed but I loved the journey along the way. Overall, I think I just wish I had longer with these characters and this story but it was a great read.

*thank you Penguin Randomhouse for an eARC in exchange for review*

This story follows Lilah, a hard of hearing (HOH) girl who goes to a hearing (mainstreamed) school and remembers going to Deaf Summer Camp fondly. When talking to her friends about a summer job before senior year, she decides to reach out to a friend she knows is now Assistant Director of the camp and BOOM she's got the job!

This story is one part summer YA romance, three part Deaf education. For context, I am a professional ASL interpreter who is working on my certification at the time of writing this review. I found that all the education aspects were great in this story. There are so many things the Deaf community deals with from parents of Deaf children not being on board with ASL as true access and feeling that oralism is the only choice to the broader and scarier things that can happen in a situation with police when a Deaf person is interacting with them.

That said, I felt like there were too many things put into this cute summer romance. And to me, that screams that there is not enough rep of Deaf identity on our shelves. One author shouldn't have to feel like every circumstance needs to be covered in one novel just in case there's never another Deaf story out there.

The things I did love was the adorable romance and the summer camp setting. I loved how ASL was described for the reader to give the context of varying signs like the difference between making out and work. I loved the diversity and the addition of Blind characters and getting a little more information for myself about things that Blind people also have for access because I'm still new to that community as well. I also loved (and cringed) at seeing the perspective of the learning hearing interpreter in the mix of these characters.

Overall, especially if you're interested in the educational piece of the Deaf community and what growing up Deaf feels like for some people, this is a good book to turn to. I think it could open people's eyes to realizing that learning the ABC's and how to say bull-shit isn't enough and it isn't even cool. It would be a lot cooler to learn the language and take part in making your community more accessible for those who share it with you.

Oh I really, really enjoyed this book.

I was a huge fan of the book Tru Biz and the tv show Switched at Birth. I felt like they really made me think about things. This book, Give me a Sign, makes the reader think about more than their own place in the world. And it teaches us too. I love when a book helps me learn and helps me understand more.

In this story, we meet Lilah. She was born with hearing loss. Her parents aren’t deaf but her little brother also has hearing loss. Her parents don’t use asl and haven’t really encouraged Lilah to either. She goes to a public school and uses hearing aids. Both those around her, both teachers and friends, often forget that she can’t hear everything.

Lilah decides to spend the summer at a deaf and blind camp she attended a few years ago. She will be a junior camp counselor this year. And she will learn more signing while she’s there.

Lilah realizes pretty quickly that while she doesn’t totally fit in at public school that she also doesn’t totally fit in with her deaf and hard of hearing camp. She debates whether she isn’t “deaf enough” and if her asl isn’t strong enough.

This was a beautiful coming of age story about Lilah getting to know herself better and her place in the world.

I really, really enjoyed it. I wish they’d make it into a tv series so I could spend more time with these characters.

I got to read an early ebook edition from NetGalley, thank you!

A wonderful, if 101ish, story about a hard of hearing teen becoming comfortable in her Deaf identity.

I love the range of experiences introduced at Camp Gray Wolf. Lilah was mainstreamed and her parents pushed her to be hearing-passing.. Isaac is profoundly deaf. voice-off, and fluent in sign language. Natasha grew up in a Deaf family but chose to get a cochlear implant due to frustrations over accessibility.. Ethan is wears hearing aids and switches seamlessly between sign and speech. And so on....not to mention the low-vision campers!

The summer camp setting is cute and provides relatively low stakes conflicts, giving Lilah's character development the time it needs over the two months of camp. Although there is romance, the primary story isn't A Romance, which is a pleasant surprise in YA. Lilah has enough to worry about without hyperfocusing on a boy!

And it's really cool to see Lilah become more fluent with ASL throughout the summer, to the point where she defaults signing to hearing people and having to catch herself. The power of language immersion!

My one quibble is over how much Lilah lectures the reader about Deaf struggles and culture. It's still utterly enjoyable and readable, it just drags in a few places.

The author, Anna Sorrentino, is Deaf. She notes that there as many Deaf perspectives as Deaf people in the world, and this is just a handful of them. <3

This book is adorable and showcases multiple different ways of being Deaf. I really appreciate that the main character is hard of hearing and is still learning sign language. That’s a segment of the Deaf community I have not seen represented. Plus, I know some families who want their children to be hearing-passing, and I can only imagine the struggle they face. This book showcases that struggle well with compelling characters in a summer camp setting that will relate to hearing and Deaf readers alike.

I'm torn. Everything about Deaf culture was a win. But everything else ... the pace was too slow, the plot too thin, the characters too many in number and without the necessary distinguishing features ... This might be one of those books you go back to for validation or a down-to-earth example of what it's like for kids who are Deaf, slice-of-life fashion.

Omg, I loved this so much (despite the insta-love)!! This is a very good rep of Deaf culture and the struggles one may have finding their identity in the world. I love the point made that it’s up to the person, it doesn’t matter what others think, because it’s all variable. I grew up with a friend who is Deaf, and was mainstreamed in a public school. She definitely didn’t have to struggle with trying to hear everything, she used sign and had interpreters, and a good friend group where most were fluent in sign. But I remember the time she won a boombox and they were going to redraw a name because she was deaf (I wouldn’t have let that slide, but her interpreter - who could also advocate for her - stepped in before I could.

My goal with this one was to get back to reading YA. And it didn’t work for me. But if you’re reading YA, I think you should give this one a try. I just couldn’t get through it. This pick was definitely me problem and NOT the book/author.

This book is so incredible, and I regret it took me so long to finally read it, but it was worth the wait. This is such an incredible story of identity and culture and community, and the impact having access to language shapes experiences. This obviously has so much care and love woven into the story, and I found it impossible to put it down. I also loved that so many different experiences were shown and described, with no experience being pushed as the one true and correct way to be D/Deaf or disabled. I look forward to future books from Sortino and am so glad this book exists!

This was a fun contemporary YA. I don't read a lot of YA but I really enjoyed this one and realness of emotion that was woven throughout it.

I am obsessed with this book. It’s so swoony and I love the depiction of deafness. The author’s lived experience gives this a solidly grounded feeling and she’s crafted a fun romance.