🪵Book Review: Give Me a Sign🪵

“We wouldn’t know our limitations if people didn’t keep telling us.”

Book: Give Me a Sign
Author: Anna Sortino
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Genre: YA Contemporary/Romance

Let me start off by saying, that this is one of the most important books I’ve read this year.

The book introduces us to 17 year old Lilah, who struggles in her day to day life as a Deaf High schooler. Everyone expects her to adapt into the hearing world, but they themselves don’t want to put in any effort to accommodate her. She also struggles with the feelings of not being „Deaf enough“
Thankfully she lands a job as a junior counselor at a summer camp for the Deaf and Blind, called Gray Wolf. It’s the perfect opportunity for her to connect and learn from & with others who are just like her. And hey, if there’s a cute counselor named Isaac, that’s just a plus 😉

➕I haven’t read many books where the MC has a disability and damn it feels nice to relate to someone in regards to that. I’m not Deaf, but I’m wheelchair bound and it gets so exhausting sometimes to try and fit into the „normal“ world.
I absolutely loved almost all the characters and the romance was so cute! Seriously, I haven’t shipped two characters like that in forever.
I loved Lilah‘s character arc and I especially loved how confident she got towards the end.
I loved learning more about Deaf culture and ASL.
The setting was very nice! I’m a big 80‘s horror fan, so this gave me Friday the 13th and Sleepaway Camp vibes. (In a good way, not in a de*d way obviously)

➖Nothing really.
It got a bit preachy from time to time, but even that’s needed sometimes!

I wish I had this book to read when I was younger. I literally want everyone to read this book!💕 Which you can, since it comes out today!

Thank you to #Netgalley & Penguin Group for this e-arc! All opinions are my own!

I received an unedited version, so the quote could have been removed since.

Synopsis
Lilah is a partially deaf teenager who is stuck between the land of the hearing and the deaf. She isn’t “deaf enough” to be submerged in the ASL world, but she struggles to keep up in the hearing world. After a long school year, she has decided to apply for a job as a counselor at her old deaf and blind camp. She always enjoyed being there and was able to learn more ASL.

Once she is there, she gets to see some of her old friends, as well as make new friends. There is a super cute British life guard, Oliver. There is Issac, another cute counselor who she happens to have night duty with. Mackenzie ,the you-tuber who makes a living teaching ASL online, and many other personalities that really make the story feel like a found family over time.

She begins to learn more about deaf people and the ASL community and the hardships they encounter. She even gets to find a summer romance, and someone to help her get better at her ASL.


Thoughts
This novel brought me so much more insight to the struggles of the hearing impaired. I wish that I had read it before I started teaching to understand my students' perspective better. I really enjoyed the love triangle, and not really knowing which direction Lilah was going to go at first. I loved her internal thoughts and how she really grew throughout the novel.

I am recommending this to all of my teacher friends, to help get more insight to your students!!! This book offered such great insight for not only understanding the deaf community, but the internal struggles of teenagers as they try to navigate life.

Read this book if you love:
-YA Romance
- Summer Romance
-Single POV
- Deaf Rep

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

Give Me a Sign follows hard-of-hearing Lilah as she struggles to find her place in the Deaf community, during a summer where she is a counselor at a camp for deaf and blind kids.

I can't think of many books that I've read with a Deaf character, and this is certainly the first I've ever read with a main character who is part of the Deaf community. In Give Me A Sign, Anna Sortino does a spectacular job of representing the vast spectrum of deafness within the community, as well as the obstacles folks often encounter both in the Deaf community and in a world that caters specifically to hearing individuals.

I loved both the heart and the authenticity of this book. he characters were rich and multifaceted, and I loved watching Lilah grow over the course of the book. There were some hard moments, most especially the police encounter, but I really appreciated Sortino's effort to represent the difficulties of navigating the world with a hearing disability.

In all, I thought this was a lovely read that has genuine and valuable Deaf representation that I am so excited about and hopeful to see more of in the YA space.

If you’re in search of the perfect YA summer read, you’ve found it! GIVE ME A SIGN was sweet and heartfelt, exploring the charm of summer romance while also looking at deaf culture, both the positive impacts and the negative aspects that society has imposed. This book was so incredibly readable and such a joy to read. It’s an incredible debut, and certainly well worth the read.

GIVE ME A SIGN follows Lilah, struggling with feeling like she lives between the hearing and the Deaf world, returning to the summer camp for the deaf and blind she went to as a kid, now as a counselor. For Lilah, it’s not just a summer job but a place where she’s surrounded by those who understand being deaf, to learn more ASL, grow, and maybe fall in love along the way.

This book is such a joy, from the (mostly) sunny summer camp vibes, to Lilah learning and growing, and seeing her romantic relationship develop as well as platonic and mentor relationships. While there are things that I wish I got to see more of, I think it’s mostly just because I enjoyed so many aspects and wanted to read even more about them. The book itself flowed well, and any things that I think will improve in Sortino’s future books were never a bother while reading because the book itself was so enjoyable.

Truly one of the best parts of this book was the interaction of identity and relationships. There are barriers (often from society) that Lilah faces in communication, both with her hearing family and friends, as well as deaf people at camp. The growth we see from Lilah in the book isn’t framed as a journey from bad to good, but instead becoming stronger in herself as well as the way she goes through the world despite the fact it’s not being built for deaf people. It’s a great glimpse into some aspects of the deaf/hard-of-hearing world but that’s not the sole reason that it’s good or that I would recommend it.

There will always be a time for a sweet and charming romance that still deals with real realities that the characters face, and this is the perfect book for that! I truly recommend it.

A special thank you to Penguin Teen and Putnam for allowing me access to this upcoming debut Young Adult book, “Give Me a Sign,” by Anna Sortino. I want to start my review by stating that lately I haven’t been gravitating towards YA books as much as I have in the past. I mean I am drawn to YA thrillers, like “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder,” but more importantly I appreciate YA books that go beyond the typical teen romance tand focus on bigger social issues, like racism/police violence (“The Hate U Give”), immigration/deportation (“The Sun Is Also A Star”), Teen Sexuality/LGBTQ (“Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda”), teen motherhood (“With the Fire on High”) to name a few. So, when I saw this book through Penguin Teen and its focus…on the deaf and hard of hearing community as well as other disabilities such as blindness, I was very intrigued. During my college years, I really enjoyed watching the show, “Switched at Birth” which had many storylines focusing on the deaf community and even featured an episode with no sound and only subtitles. So, I was definitely interested in this book!

In this story, we are following main character, Lilah who is torn between two worlds. She is partially deaf which means she is not deaf enough for her family to use ASL in their daily life…and she is not fully immersed with the hearing coming as she wears hearing aids. She encounters situations in her everyday life that causes her to feel like an outsider, such as missing parts of conversations due to her hearing aids.. However, there was one place that made her feel normal and not so self conscious about hearing…a summer camp which Lilah attended when she was growing up. This camp is geared towards children with disabilities such as blindness, deafness. So when the opportunity arises, she applies to become a counselor which would allow her to practice her ASL skills and surround herself with the deaf community. And that is when the story really begins!

Going into this book, I was very interested to get a realistic look at the deaf perspective which I knew the author, Anna Sortino, who is deaf, would be able to provide. I really appreciated the conversations throughout this book ranging from a hearing person financially benefiting from doing ASL videos; leadership hierarchy placement (a hearing person vs a deaf person); the ignorance the hearing community can have regarding the deaf community; the varying forms of different disabilities; the lack of knowledge/sometimes sympathy regarding the deaf community in society, and even legal situations.

I definitely recommend this book, especially during Disability Pride Month!

Give Me A Sign Goes On-Sale July 11th

I'm hard of hearing, so this book was particularly appealing to me. I find it fascinating how different the various experiences of the HoH/Deaf are - there were several sections that rankled me because they so directly conflicted with my experience that it almost felt offensive. However, I recognize that we are such a diverse community that it is impossible for there to be "one" true story. I hope that others will write similar books, and we can see the wide array of experiences within the HoH/Deaf community.

Aside from the representation, the book itself is enjoyable. A definite summer read - lighthearted, putting everyone back in their camp days. It's cute to see how the friendships grow and develop. The plot is very much "my time at summer camp" without much of a story arc, but it works because that's largely how summer camp feels.

I am grateful that a book like this exists and will be available to others to read. I look forward to the day when HoH/Deaf folks can be represented in books but their disability will not be at the forefront of the plot.

Give Me a Sign by Anna Sortino is a cute, summer camp YA novel that was quite enjoyable to read, filled with falling in love for the first time, finding yourself as a teenager and all the nostalgia of summer surrounded by campfires, swimming in the lake and enjoying nature. Give Me a Sign has the added depth with Deaf, hard of hearing and blind characters that are quite often non existent in books and movies. As a hearing reader, it was enlightening to read about all that the Deaf and HoH culture has to endure that I didn't realize. Overall this book was a fantastic read and I am grateful to Author Anna Sortino, Penguin Teen and Netgalley for the ARC.

I really enjoyed this YA contemporary! It was simple in plot, but the main character Lilah's journey with her own deafness gives a nice twist to it. I really enjoyed Lilah's journey and observations. She has some hearing and can speak and her parents have made her use a hearing aid her whole life, so she doesn't feel "deaf enough". But her hearing friends at school don't know how to accommodate her disability either, so she feels stuck between the deaf community and hearing people. She returns to a summer camp for the deaf and blind that she went to as a kid to be a counselor to try to learn more ASL and be more involved in the deaf community.

I enjoyed the observations of all the hardships that that deaf people face too: parents who refuse to learn ASL and want their deaf children to be hearing-passing, imposter syndrome for deaf people that have some hearing or implants, people viewing disability as something to be cured or to strive to not have, and hearing people who monetize ASL and take away from deaf creators (I knew a girl like this in college who had a youtube channel and everything and it was incredibly annoying and she reminded me a lot of Mackenzie).

Overall, a typical but enjoyable YA contemporary with great own-voices disability rep! Thank you to Penguin Teen sending me a free copy as a Penguin Teen Partner in exchange for an honest review!

Lilah is adrift in a world that doesn't quite fit for her. Her friends, family, and doctors don't fully understand her experience with hearing loss and it is a struggle. Not quite "deaf enough" and certainly not "hearing enough" her identity is up in the air. By reconnecting with old friends and new as a junior counselor at a Deaf summer camp, Lilah starts to discover what it means to embrace her whole self and finds that she doesn't have to have it all figured out, but there are people that will join her on the journey to finding herself.

Coming of age books always tug at the heartstrings, even more so with stellar disability representation. This book covers a good spectrum of not only hearing loss, but vision loss as well and provides an accessible oasis for the characters to thrive. If you don't have any knowledge of Deaf culture you will enjoy this book, but if you do you will see the value in the careful craft of the characters. The author addresses so many topics from audism, language deprivation, assistive devices, oppression, hearing privilege/clout, sign language acquisition, and more. These are difficult topics that I feel covered in a way that is thorough and age appropriate for the target audience for this book. This should definitely be on the shelf of anyone who works with young people with hearing loss, especially those struggling with their (d)Deaf identity. The message in this book is amazing - there isn't one thing that works for all (d)Deaf/Hard of Hearing/DeafBlind people, but there is a community of support in figuring it out.

I could NOT put it down! It’s a sweet contemporary romance that is so easy to devour. There is humor, there is friendship, there is love, there is tackling of some tough issues in sweet, thoughtful ways. Lilah heads to summer camp as a junior counsellor, in hopes to prove herself and immerse more in a world (as a deaf child of hearing parents, one of her big goals is to learn ASL more fluently). One of my favorite aspects of this book is the rep—a huge majority of the characters have varying levels of disabilities. I also absolutely love the camp setting. I never even WENT to a sleep away camp as a kid, but man was I obsessed with the idea of it—somehow this book had me feeling nostalgic about my childhood daydreams! Finally, the voice. I absolutely loved immersing myself in Lilah’s world. The book was such a sweet, fun read and I cannot recommend it enough!

I’d like to first state that I’m not Deaf. That being said, my degree is in ASL interpreting and I have spent countless time in Deaf spaces. This story is reminiscent of stories I’ve heard in the Deaf community. I think this book is phenomenal with representation. The cover shows characters using ASL, the book seamlessly blends ASL and spoken English through the written dialogue. I hope many hearing people read this book, it brings up typical ableist things hearing people do/say to Deaf people - maybe without knowing it’s ableist. This is also such a cute and fun summer camp story. I’ve already pre-order this book months ago, so when I got the approval for the ARC I was ecstatic.

Ahh, loved this! It was a bit more infuriating than I was expecting just because ableists going to ableist, but ultimately what a wonderful celebration of Deaf pride. I loved so many of these characters and even found the romance very cute.

I loved the representation of the deaf community in this book. There were a tonne of little things that I hadn't considered, for example, people who are hard of hearing feeling uncomfortable in the disabled and hearing communities. I did, however, think the plot dragged in the middle, and I found myself having to push through.

Can a job at a summer camp for deaf and blind kids help Lilah, 17, come to terms with speaking American Sign Language while finding a place in the deaf community?

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers of this book for the e-arc copy.

Give Me A Sign touches on finding yourself, finding where you feel most comfortable and showed a lot of what the deaf culture consists of. It was truly eye opening and made me more aware of things that I hadn’t known about prior. I’m so happy I was able to read this, experience the camp with all of the characters and just see their outlooks on everything. Experiencing, how they were able to breakthrough certain obstacles that may have been hard or scary was lovely!

I will say, some parts did fall a bit short and made me unable to stay interested , but overall it was such a great read and I hope many people will read it. 4/5 ⭐️

I received an ARC and I’m leaving an honest review.

The differences and clear lines between the hearing world and the Deaf world are very stark in this book (and in reality). It was nice to read about this immersion into Deaf culture and how, even in your own community, it can be hard to accept your identity.

The supermarket incident was hard to read, and the knowledge that it's a situation (and misunderstanding) that happens all the time didn't make it any less terrifying.

One thing I loved is the fact that almost the entire cast was disabled, and I think it's great that we have this type of story in a young adult book, both for the Deaf kids who'll see themselves represented and for the hearing ones that will start to have a better understanding of what life is like for other people.

Because of my own anxiety (and nightmare past experience as a summer camp counselor), I was panicking and tearing up every time Lilah fell behind with ASL, or made a mistake as a counselor. It had me unintentionally on edge since the start of the book.

Isaac was a sweetheart, but he frustrated me a little bit. Despite the language barrier, he still could have found ways to emotionally communicate a little better with Lilah. But in a way, I also understand him so I can't blame him too much for that. I loved how their relationship developed and how they kept talking to each other after the end, too.

Content warnings: violence, ableism (external and internalized), prejudice, police brutality, alcohol, underage drinking, bullying, injury, sexual harassment, hearing person using ASL for clout.

Thank you to Netgalley and publisher for this ARC! This book was definitely more contemporary than romance. I think it is very eye opening to deaf culture. There are some very important conversations being had in the book that people outside of the deaf community need to hear. I liked Lilah. I wish we saw her develop more in terms of relationships outside of Isaac. I think there were other characters I wanted to hear more from like Natasha and the life guards. Overall it’s a good read.

Have you ever read a book and thought “ok I just read a book that really matters, it’s really important that it was written and that I read it”. That’s what Give Me.a Sign felt like. It’s a book that really matters.

This book follows Lilah who is 17 and hard of hearing (HOH). She ends up being a counselor at Camp Gray Wolf, a camp for those that are deaf or blind. She navigates summer camp, romance, and figuring out for her what being part of the Deaf community means.

This book is sweet and fun and really shows that REPRESENTATION MATTERS. It also tackles thoughts and questions of ableism in a palatable way for teens.

Read for:
Coming of age
ASL/Deaf Rep
Summer camp
Young love
Disability Rep
YA
Single POV
Friends to lovers

“I can bring both world’s together. Just by being myself, I’m complete”

5⭐

This is easily one of the best YA books I've read this year. It filled a YA shaped hole in my heart that I didn't even know I had and I loved it so so much. Lilah and Isaac were everything but also the Deaf culture and discussion on disabilities in this book? Fantastic, I highlighted so many parts. This book was basically True Biz from last year if it was more young adult and there was some really adorable romance.

The summer camp vibes and falling in love moments including the classic nervous teen moment where Lilah thinks Isaac doesn't like her makes this book a perfect summer read. But the Deaf experience portrayed in this book is for all the time and that is the most important part of this book. Everyone should read this one because you will fall in love with Lilah, Isaac and their community and learn a lot as well.

I finished Give Me a Sign in about a day because I pretty much couldn't stop reading, if that's any indication of my enjoyment of the book (which yes, it is!). I had a lot of fun reading about Camp Gray Wolf, learning about the Deaf community and Deaf culture, and realizing just how inaccessible our world is (not that I've never thought of that, but as a hearing person, I'd never thought in depth about it).

I love summer camp romances--they give me that wistfulness/nostalgia for an experience I haven't had, and they make me wish I'd gotten to go to a fun camp over the summer! But more than that, I loved getting to see Lilah learn about herself and her Deaf identity, as she starts the book feeling very much in the middle of being hearing and deaf, not feeling like her hearing was bad enough to really allow herself to call herself capital D Deaf, but also very much so struggling around hearing people, like her friends and parents and at school. We get to see, over the course of this camp, Lilah not only learning ASL and becoming more fluent in it but also becoming more comfortable and confident in herself and figuring out what being Deaf means to her. Along the way, she makes new friends, finds her place at camp, and gets a really sweet, charming romance.

This is the first book I've read with a Deaf/hard of hearing main character, and I really hope there will be more books like this to read and love; diversity in representation of all forms is so important, and going through Lilah's struggles in Give Me a Sign helped to open my eyes to what kinds of everyday problems Deaf people face. Listening fatigue, the lack of closed captioning in movie theaters, the dismissive attitude of Hearies to the challenges of Deaf people and ableist attitudes are things I hadn't considered much before, as I don't know anyone who's Deaf. The discussion centered around Mackenzie's Youtube channel in the book was interesting, as I can easily see this being based off of real people/content creators who are not part of the Deaf community; it was good to see Mackenzie acknowledge what she'd done wrong, at least in some capacity, and to realize that she'd never fully understand what Deaf people go through. I do wish we'd gotten a bit more character development for all the characters, as we only really learn some superficial facts about each of them, which I think is one of the weakest parts of the book. However, I get that in first person POV, that's always a challenge, especially due to the focus on Deaf culture, community, and identity, even for Lilah, as we don't know too much about Lilah beyond that.

The romance is super cute, very YA, and not terribly deep, but I still liked it a lot (what can I say, I'm always a sucker for romance); Lilah and Isaac are attracted to each other from the beginning, and it's clear that Isaac pays a lot of attention to Lilah and flirts with her (it's really cute though, like I kicked my feet because it was just that adorable lol). Isaac has his own share. of hurt from hearing people around him at school, as we learn, but it doesn't exactly come into play the way that Natasha kind of warns Lilah about, which, now that I think about it, is a little odd, since it feels like one of those threads that was introduced but not quite used. I think I see where it might've tied into what happens at the major conflict, but not quite. Overall, the romance is pretty low drama (a hint of a love triangle, kind of) and adds a lot of smiles and fluff to this book that help. to balance out the heavier topics when it comes to interacting with people outside of camp.

Writing-wise, I think some additional dialogue tags would've helped, as I understand cutting them sometimes, but in some instances it was a bit hard for me to tell who was speaking/signing. Other than that, I thought the use of speaking and signing was really neat, as it definitely changes depending on who Lilah is interacting with, and it gets used as kind of a part of the plot in Lilah's frequency of usage. I've always found ASL interesting (I only know the alphabet lol) and wanted to learn, and I definitely looked up some signs when they got described in the book (thank you, belong, etc.) to better understand what these signs look like; reading this also makes me want to start learning more ASL because it's so cool! All language is fascinating, and ASL is no exception.

Thank you to Netgalley/G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers for the ARC! I'm looking forward to Anna Sortino's sophomore novel that I believe is coming out next year.