What To Say Next by Julie Buxbaum

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Publication date: 2017
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages: 287
My rating: 3 stars
Ages: 14+

The day Kit decides to sit with loner David at lunch is the day that both of their lives start changing. Kit is dealing with the aftermath of losing her father in an accident and is tired of the exasperated pity and sympathy she gets from her friends. David lives his life to be invisible and to survive high school—a place that he doesn't understand no matter how hard he tries. Can the two of them help each other overcome what they are both going through?

This book is told through alternating the POV from David to Kit and back, each chapter. I think this is really important because to see things from just one point of view wouldn't have worked for the story. David is very literally, falling on the autism spectrum, so if it were told completely from his view we wouldn't get the nuances and subtleties. Kit is seeing things very emotionally, so we need David's straight forward view. They perfectly balanced each other out.

The book plays with tropes usually found in high school movies and novels, sometimes completely rejecting them and sometimes embracing them. I liked that our main characters were different than the majority of main characters in American novels.

There was very minor language.

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