After a hard school year, V has been sent to her Grandma Jojo’s house for the summer to get away from it all. But unlike neurodivergent, artistic, sock-collecting V, Jojo is uptight, critical, and obsessed with her spotless house. She doesn’t get V at all. Vis sure she’s doomed to have the worst summer ever.
Then V starts hearing noises from inside the walls of the house. Knocks, the sounds of a girl crying, and voices echoing in the night.
When V finds a ghostly girl hiding in the walls, they seem to have an immediate connection. This might be V’s chance to get back at her perfect grandmother by messing with her just a little bit.
But the buried secrets go much deeper, and are much more dangerous, than V even suspects. And they threaten to swallow her and her family whole if she can’t find a way to uncover the truth of the girl before it’s too late.
Wow. A lot is going on in this story. There is way too much to unpack here and I don’t have the time or the perseverance to go into all of it. So, I’m going to focus on the characters.
I like V. She is proud to be weird and ‘neurospicy’, her term. This is how we should all strive to be. Proud of who we are in a world that wants us to blend in.
Grandma Jojo, on the other hand, is completely different. She cares about looking presentable, hides away any imperfection, and pretends that everything is fine. I theorized what Grandma Jojo’s deal was early in the book.
What I couldn’t figure out was the ghost girl. Who is she? Why is she hiding in the walls? Does Grandma Jojo know she’s here? Is she a past relative who was accidentally murdered? Or a manifestation of bottled-up negative emotions given a human form?
I found it strange how the story never goes into detail about autistic behaviors. Traits like difficulties with social interaction or sensory sensitivities. The only attributes suggested were being messy and having an interest in art. It was more about what life is like being autistic and how the rest of the world treats you for being autistic. How hard it is to live with the criticism of others and the self-doubt that festers in your head. How we feel like we must mask to blend in, to appear normal, so we can survive in this world that doesn’t want to deal with us.
Here are a few of my favorite snippets from the story:
- As if anyone’s ever too old for interesting things.
- My neurospicy brain might be a double-edged sword with good and hard stuff, but art is my superpower.
- I’m autistic; I don’t have autism, like some backpack I can take on and off.
- I don’t want to think I mask, that there are times I wonder if I like who I am, what it would be like if I was neurotypical, that I listen to the voices and push down my exploding V-ness into a normal person box.
Overall, this is an excellent neurodivergent novel that addresses the struggles of being autistic with a spooky supernatural twist.