Published By: Macmillan
Pages: 400
Released On: 02/04/2026
Enter Raina Lewis, London’s hottest It Girl – effortlessly cool, endlessly intriguing, and beloved for her smash-hit podcast spotlighting autistic women. But not everyone’s convinced by the hype.
Investigative journalist and ‘King of Cancel Culture’, Tom Branimir is sure there’s more to Raina than meets the eye. He’s determined to uncover her secret. . . if he can just manage not to fall for her first.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for the advanced copy o this title in return for an honest review.
This is my second of Elle’s books I’ve read, but I do own four others, and she has quickly become a go-to author for empowering and beautifully tender stories and characters. She doesn’t sugar coat anything, it’s rough and raw, but that’s what what we need to see. We, and particularly young readers, need to see themselves in stories as the hero.
It’s a very refreshing romance. It gives me everything I expected from a romance book, but she packages it in a slightly different way which makes it feel fresh. It’s cheesy and corny and fabulous.
Raina and Tom are complete opposites and yet their chemistry is palpable and I think part of that is because they’re so different. Raina doesn’t hide the difficulties she’s gone through but she’s still bright and bubbly, whereas Tom is quite sedate and pessimistic, particularly at the start.
I loved the chemistry between their minds, not just their bodies. Tom appears a bit lost at first but together they make their way through. He wants to learn from her and she wants to let him in, but it’s not always as easy that that.
It is vital that mainstream fiction includes more autistic characters, and not just as a sidekick or a box to tick or to be the butt of the joke. Autistic people – and therefore autistic characters – are just the same as neurotypical people. Sure, there are differences, but they’re no more different than a neurotypical person is to another neurotypical person. We are each our own person, and to say that neurodiverse people cannot do this, that, or the other is ridiculous. And the fact that this still needs to be sad is absurd, and Elle has captured this brilliantly. Particularly in the opening few chapters, she shows it in a tongue-in-cheek way, but that doesn’t lesson the seriousness.
I believe this is her debut adult novel, and it definitely is more adult, what with the inclusion of swearing and love scenes, but I think the heart of her stories are the same.
It is a relatively long book but it doesn’t feel like it I found the opening fabulous and the ending good. Did it slightly dip in the middle? Perhaps, every so slightly. Enough of me to notice but not enough to spoil the enjoyment of it.
I have not had a diagnosis of autism, although I have several relatives who have. There are definitely elements I identify with and people have said I probably am neurodiverse, but I think everyone is to a certain degree. Anyway, I digress. What I’m trying to say is that whilst I really enjoyed it, I think it would be appreciated more by an audience who is autistic, particularly young men and women who are autistic and feeling a bit alone or a bit shunned and aren’t sure where their place in the world is.
This is a book for those of us who have been told “but you don’t look autistic”, or that you’re “too autistic; too different “.
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