![]() ![]() Queens of Geek follows Charlie and Taylor, two teenage girls who travel from Australia to America to attend SupaCon (sort of a fictionalized Comic-Con) along with their mutual friend Jamie. ![]() ![]() There’s plenty of truth here that can only come from first-hand experience, which may provide necessary uplift for autistic and anxious girls who don’t always get that, and all wrapped in a fluffy YA romance. ![]() Jen Wilde is autistic and anxious herself, which gives the narrative authenticity that is so lacking in similar books. This is what makes Taylor, one of the two narrators of Queens of Geek, such a refreshing character. Often, autistic characters in books lack any sort of explicit anxiety, which isn’t true to my experiences or those of the majority of autistic people I know. And books about autistic protagonists with pronounced anxiety disorders (or, heck, books about characters with anxiety in general) were virtually nonexistent. When I was a teen, the only books with autistic protagonists were either (a) sappy “ inspiration porn” that only served to make me feel worse about my disability or (b) books that hit home well enough, but which still missed the authenticity that a narrative written by an autistic person would’ve provided, or which contained too many harmful tropes. Queens of Geek is definitely the kind of book I would have appreciated when I was sixteen, and I’m glad that today’s teens will be able to find it on their library shelves. ![]()
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