This book was really different for me. I loved the autism representation - particularly non-verbal autism. Paige is non-verbal - but uses text-to-voice apps to communicate. She's hilarious and completely unfiltered. She also truly illuminates how vulnerable folks like her can be to abuse and control of others. When she moves in with her best friend and Brody - Brody really doesn't know what to do with her. But ultimately he sees her for the special person she is.

This book has a lot of difficult themes - loss of a parent, drug and alcohol abuse and use, parental control and abuse, sexual difficulties, sexual assault, and more. So reader beware if you have triggers. But Paige is definitely a breath of fresh air and Brody is a truly good guy - and seeing them together is very much adorable.

Overall - I liked it a lot - but I had some issues with the pacing. A lot and nothing are going on all at the same time - and that got frustrating.

I received this as an ARC via NetGalley, but these opinions are all my own.

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This story jumps right in with characters who are flawed, not perfect but feel real.
It’s not a fairytale romance, but a romance non the less.

The characters are not like any I’ve read about before. Yet Paige reads relatable, Amber is a great best friend and her incredible brother Brody make for the perfect boyfriend.

I liked that the book doesn’t shy away from heavy topics like addiction and abuse, but that the main story is the love between Paige and Brody.

I did like the storyline and overall did enjoy parts of it. Some chapters I kind of got lost of what is going on. I didn't feel any connection with the characters. Which I think is important to grab the readers attention with likeable characters. So gave it a 3.

I couldn’t put this down. I had to finish it in one sitting over several hours because I fell so hard for these characters! I thought from reading other reviews that the way Paige “talks” would bother me, but it was the opposite. Her communication, while totally unique, was flawlessly written in a way that made it as natural to read as “normal” speech. I wanted to fight for her from the very first chapter and (quietly) scream at her that just because she’s differently wired doesn’t make her less in any way! The way the story unfolded and seeing the growth in all the characters made me feel all warm and fuzzy. I’m going to download book 2 right now

I really enjoyed reading a story that represented a nonverbal, autistic main female character's perspective as she goes through life with the challenges ahead of her. With that said, it was challenging to read about her difficulties and the way she puts herself down in her on mind over and over again because of the ableist lies she's been told by her mother. She thinks she can't be loved unconditionally or accepted because of her autism and nonverbal communication style and she says this to herself over and over again. I wanted to love this book because of the representation included in the story, but it just felt super heavy to me and seemed to drag. I'm all for a slow burn, but sometimes the plot felt like it moved slower than molasses. Brody was an ok hero who was great at being gentle with Paige but never seemed like the most upstanding guy when he was discussing intimacy and casual relationships with friends from work. I wanted to soar through this book and ended up dragging me feet a little bit to pick it up and get through it. As always, I appreciate when authors take the time to create unique and neurodiverse characters. I just wish the amount of trauma, sexual graphicness and condescension were topics that progressed instead of feeling stagnant and repeatedly difficult to read about.

Many thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this story, all thoughts are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley for letting me read an advanced copy of this book. It was really awesome. I am a huge fan of books with under-represented main characters, and this really brought something to my attention that I had not considered. Am I entirely sure about the medical basis of her diagnosis? Not really, but the story was fascinating, and I appreciated how she wasn't suddenly cured at the end.
As for the plot, it was enticing enough. What I did not appreciate was how there was such a strong focus on sex. I think that the story arc could have been way better without it, but I am not the author (or an author for that matter), and it wasn't my story to tell. In the midst of this odd plot situation, I do like how Brody (terrible name if we are being honest) handled her and the sex situation. With that being said, I think he was LEGIT stupid for that brash move at the end (IYKYK); it was blatantly dangerous. The relationship with Amber is odd, for all parties. Interesting but odd. Overall, I was incredibly entertained. There were some things I really didn't like, but I liked the overall vibe.

This is the 1st book of Love Beyond Words series, it can be read as stand alone. My first in this series and this book is good. Trigger warning: this book contain Mental and Emotional Abuse, Neglect, drugs, depresion, anxiety, panic attack, mental health. This book not for everyone especially the prude one. Lol.

I loveee this book, i cant stop laugh, weird and sad at the same time. Paige so pure but dirty at the same time, she has autism, it not burden her free spirit, curious and not afraid to explore. She strugle with mental and emotional abuse. Amber help her to get out from her home but its complicated. There is Brody, Amber brother who doesnt think much about Paige but slowly fall for her. He fall so hard, want to protect Paige, taking care of her, make effort to understand and priority Paige happiness. Brody feeling to Paige make me think thats was love! I cant wait for Amber and Miguel story!!

Thank you to NetGalley for provide this book, it is pleasure to review this book.

#Nonverbal #LoveBeyondWords #RainaAsh #PinkFoxPublishing #XpressoBookTours #NetGalley #NetGalleyCoop #ARC

When I read “The Love Quotient’ by Helen Huang, I got very interested in love stories where autism would be brought up . To me, it was an enjoyable reading experience while learning a lot from it at the same time.

“Nonverbal” is about Paige who is trying to escape from an abusing environment. Her friend Amber helps her to escape and takes her to her brother’s house. When Brody (Amber’s brother) meets Paige, he is shocked. This girl has a lot of bruises on her body and has a wound that barely healed. On top of that, Paige can only communicate with people via her phone.

When Brody accepts to let Paige live in his house together with Amber, he already regrets this decision. Because it seems that there is a connection between Paige and Brody. They can’t seem to keep their eyes off each other. But Brody promised his sister to not touch Paige. So he keeps his distance from her. This is hard to do as they all live together.

But by getting to know Paige more, he is getting more and more protective over her. He helps her to control her disorder and to fight off her family who are trying to hurt her. Brody’s promise to his sister is getting harder and harder to keep.

I am not sure if I liked or didn’t like this story. It took me a couple of chapters to really get into it. The story starts with Paige arriving in Brody’s house. It took some time to connect the dots with each other and to find out what really happened to her. I wasn’t a huge fan of Paige being a huge porn fan. In this story, Paige loves to watch dvd’s of porn. Every single day! I thought it was a bit strange. I was also not a huge fan of Amber. I did sympathize with her mental health issues, but I didn’t like at all how she treated Brody. She would be shouting at him every single time. And it really started to bother me after a while. Except for Paige, nobody really deserves Brody in this book. Although, I enjoyed learning more about autism, the story/characters didn’t appeal to me.

Nonverbal (Love Beyond Words) by Raina Ash is a contemporary romance. Paige—a bubbly, autistic woman obsessed with EDM—is lost when it comes to finding a man to connect with. But when she moves in with her best friend's brother, the chemistry is instant. Is there room for love in her fight for independence? Paige yearns for one thing: release. But physical barriers make that wish seem impossible. Thanks to a shattered home life, she also doesn't know how to trust. Especially those she loves. Paige isn't expecting a spark with her bestie's brother, Brody. He's gigantic, protective, and makes her feel something she hasn't felt in a long time: safe. Brody wants to keep his relationship with Paige platonic, but he can't get the troubled woman out of his mind. Maybe it's the way she makes him question his entire stance on relationships. But his sister, Amber, warns him to stay away. He needs to listen. For everyone's sake. As Paige struggles to navigate her tumultuous feelings and legal troubles, words fail her. How can she understand her heart when her past left her damaged? And what if revealing the truth means losing Brody forever?

Nonverbal gives readers a good look at how one nonverbal, autistic woman feels and what she has been through. Her search for a life, and an orgasm, is the foundation of the book. I loved the relationship with Brody, and how organically it is formed. I also love that the book contained honest looks at how addiction and trauma effects people, and how being willing and ready for change is just as important of every other aspect of growth. I felt like Paige, Brody, and Ashley all grew a great deal in this story, and that even secondary characters that we only saw glimpses of are on their own journeys- not just scenery for this one story. There is talk about abuse and trauma, and a great deal of honesty thoughts and conversation about sex. If any of these things are triggers for you, or something you just do not want to read about, then I would skip the read. However, I thought all of the hard topic included in the book are tacked with honesty and respect, which I greatly appreciated.

Nonverbal is a engaging and emotional read.

I really enjoyed this. Brody and Paige are so good for each other and I loved seeing them open up. It was interesting so see Paige clearly describe the feelings of love but not know what it is. I also really liked the realistic depiction of her not really being able to orgasm.

This was definitely an interesting book! I really enjoyed the writing and the characters. Brody was a great Himbo and Paige was so funny. It wasn’t super spicy despite there being a lot of talk about sex, but it felt like enough. My biggest gripes are the pet names he called her (didn’t like them) and it kinda felt like all the action towards the end was unnecessary and came out of nowhere. Overall I really enjoyed it though.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

This book deals with a lot of potentially triggering issues, and the author delves into them head on. They are dealt with in a way that can feel scary, but are real and true. She does an excellent job writing from an autistic perspective and really looks at a person within the autistic community (non-verbal) that is not often talked about, especially in romance.

Aside from the excellent representation in this book, I loved Paige and Brody's relationship. It starts out a little weird on Paige's part, but I could see where the author was going. Brody is an interesting character himself, and it was interesting to see him fall in love.

Raina Ash did a great job writing a non-verbal autistic character. Oftentimes autistic characters, and even more so, non-verbal autistic characters are portrayed in a way that infantilizes them. The author did a great job in not doing this. She also did a great job in using AAC apps for communication. She also did a good job of not "cleaning everything up nicely" at the end, showing that things like guardianship and conservatorship take time to deal with.

Please be warned. There is a lot about sex in this book. It is very sex positive, and talks openly about sex. Some of it is very clinical in nature, but oddly there is not much descriptive sex scenes. I do think however, there was so parts of the book that weren't fully fleshed out. Sometimes it felt like the discussion of sex was just on page to be on page, serving no real purpose. I think that more character development could have happened.

I will check out future reads by this author. I think a it is important in romance (and novels in general) to have diverse reads and this one filled a gap that exists in the literary community. Thank you to NetGalley and Pink Fox Publishing for a copy of this book. All opinions are 100% mine.

Let's just get one thing straight right now: THIS BOOK INVOLVES A LOT ABOUT SEX!

While there are not a ton of sex scenes between our two leads, sex is at the forefront of both Paige's and Brody's minds in the beginning, even though they are not sleeping with each other. There is voyeurism, adult videos, fantasizing events, the act itself, pretty much the works. So if you are not into that bookwise, just skip this, it's not for you.

Now that we've established that, let's talk about the rest of the book. I thought the plot was interesting, I'm a sucker for the Best Friend's Brother Trope because the pining you can find here is amazing. I think this book played that well, especially with Amber constantly saying she does not want her brother to pursue Paige (even though that itself got annoying at times). Amber doesn't want him to treat her best friend like a one-stand that he can throw away the next day. It's completely valid reasoning, especially because Paige is living with them because of problems at home, and Amber doesn't want her to get her.

I ended up reading this in one sitting because I was genuinely curious about where the story was taking me. I wanted to see when Paige and Brody took that leap. I wanted to see Paige feeling free to be herself. I also wanted to see how the conflict that brought her to live with Amber and Brody is resolved. My curiosities kept me going, and I'm fairly satisfied with how everything ended.

The reasons I gave it three stars:
I like it and it had some good moments
It's a reread candidate to see if I would like it more
It's not a favorite in the least, but I don’t hate it
I didn’t vibe with the writing (totally a me thing), but it’s not terrible
It did the minimum of what I thought it would, which is not a bad thing, but it could have been much better
I’m intrigued enough to want to read more from the author.

Overall, it was a good read, but check the trigger warnings for this book before you read it yourself!

This Book in Emojis: 🥵🐼🥴🎧💋

This will go up tomorrow on my Instagram:

When I first found Nonverbal by Raina Ash I knew nothing about the book beyond the summary. It tells the story of a young woman named Paige who is autistic and speaks through an app on her phone. She runs away from an abusive home with the help of her best friend Amber and discovers what love and family are supposed to look like along the way.

This book was one of those beautiful rare finds that I loved from beginning to end. It’s a relatively quick read, and the plot is engaging with drama, comedy, and romance. I also loved the opportunity to get to experience the story from the perspective of a neurodivergent character. It was also so refreshing that all of her problems weren’t instantly solved because a man entered her life.

I was engaged from the first chapter till the final pages. At first I wanted to see how Paige and Brody finally gave into their feelings. They are such a sweet fictional couple who definitely won my heart very quickly. Then I had to know how things would finally resolve. I read it over the course of a weekend, and the length and pacing are perfect for that sort of time frame.

The characters are wonderfully diverse and well written. I adored Paige from the first moment. She is bright, charming, and has an amazing heart. The way she draws Brody in is electric, and I loved every moment of it.

Brody had to grow on me a bit to be honest. He started out very selfish and self centered, whining about how having another room mate would affect his porn watching. Yet, as the story progresses and he adjusts to having Paige in his home, his protective nature is allowed to flourish. I changed my mind about him very quickly, and I’m so glad I gave him a chance.

This book is a 5 out of 5 for me. There are a lot of possible triggers, so make sure you check that out. It is also very spicy (a 4 out of 5) and the subject matter is mature, but I can’t say enough good things about this book.

*I received this as an eARC from Netgalley*

This book was strangely wholesome. Considering the mindset of the MMC in the beginning and FMCs obsession with porn, I would’ve expected much more spice in this novel but that’s not really what happened.

Paige has autism and is nonverbal, but that’s not the main point of the story. You quickly learn that her home life leaves a lot to be desired and she is struggling with being an adult woman in every sense. Her sole focus is sexually for the majority of the novel.

Brody is ever “macho gym bro” in the beginning and is almost unbearable to read, but as the novel progresses he gets better. He loses his gym bro personality and becomes super invested in Paige. Sometimes I thought it was cringey, other times it was cute.

Watching them develop was cute for the most part. Trying to get around the sexual hang ups she has was interesting.

My only real beef with the story in general was her use of the ACC app that spoke for her. I admit, I have no clue what that is, and have yet to google it. But my issue isn’t the app, it’s the fact that it’s always so readily available. Like they will literally be in the middle of having sex, and you expect me to believe she has the time and mental capacity to text out full thoughts? The one time sign language was used was her saying “thank you” super early on. Being as Paige is nonverbal, I assumed ASL would’ve played a much bigger part. Her mom and the man didn’t even attempt to use ASL at any point. (Now given what we learn later, it kinda makes sense but still)

While I didn’t just love the book, it was good. I enjoyed reading about Paige and her struggles with everything. Brody was kinda meh. Amber (Brody’s sister) was basically a train wreck waiting to happen for majority of the novel.

Regardless of how I felt about it overall, I think this was a good book, and would recommend it to others.

1.5 or 2⭐️ — I do love my best friend’s brother or brother’s best friend's trope but this one did not give me all the feels. It’s just not for my liking but maybe it is for some people.

Paige, a broken girl who has disabilities of speaking started moving in with her best friend (Amber) and she was introduced to Brody. Amber was strictly speaking to Brody for not making a move to Paige at all. But they have some sort of attraction here and there until Paige has a breakdown when Troy moves in and has sex in his own room with his girl, Candy but Paige sneaks them. After that, Brody and Paige have a connection and start to have sex and explore Paige’s own body to understand herself more. Next, because of Paige's anxiety and because she feels broken and doesn’t deserve more, she left them and back to her own home. Her mother and her stepfather's treatment were no different than before she was moving out. After that fight, she tries to reach Brody and Paige and get to their home again but got caught up by his stepfather. Brody and his stepfather had a fight but Brody won. Then, they live together again with Amber starting hooking up with Miguel. THE END (that concludes all the storyline, I guess)

Regarding the Storyline, I am not a fan of the writing style even though the author was trying to put some issues here and there but it would be much better if she could pull up some strings and focus on that issue more. I dislike how it turns out and did not expect anything more throughout the story and I even can predict the ending. In the beginning, I was amazed by this character who has disabilities but she has her own ground to hold. Also, about the thing she could do with talking on her phone when it was explained, I was totally shocked and almost think that this book might be sci-fi LOL. However, when it comes to the story I was disappointed because it doesn’t have meaning. Even though the author adds some issues it just doesn’t feel right and needs some improvement.

Of the Characters, only one person has my heart. Frank. Always coming out from his house with a riffle. That’s it, that’s my favorite character. Amber as a sister and a best friend is quite horrible and not in a good manner way. There was a time when she was telling Brody that Wiping her cheeks, she responds, “When are you ever cool-headed.” OK maybe in some departments, he isn’t but throughout the storyline, Amber was the one who was always hysterical and put too much drama in her life. Paige, The broken girl, I get it. She doesn’t even think of the expense she would put for Brody and Amber. My question: ”How could she goes topless for the stranger when she has trust issues and let him touch her when he tried to change her bandage?”. Brody is a man, I do get it but he acts like a woman throughout the book. Even his chapter and Paige in comparison was almost similar. Maybe the author needs to put more time into making them separate in different ways because they look kinda similar to me. Also, when he was kicking out Troy after finding out Paige reason for closing off herself more was because of Troy. It doesn’t make sense at all. He is a boy, not a man and he needs improvement in some characteristics he had to be a man. Even Paige and especially Amber are.

Others:
➊Hallucinating, the author did a great job of how she wants the readers to understand what hallucinating after taking weed is like. It showed vividly in her writing that IF her chosen words can be more expanded and selective rather than all of this nonsense written in this part. However, I appreciate her can show how it looks like in this department
➋Coping Mechanism, shutting the world with your music is one of the coping mechanisms this book wanted to hold. Especially for Paige who loves EDM. However, there is no specific way of her love for EDM music or her knowledge about that kind of stuff at all. Even though it is good to bring this up as a coping mechanism for a specific character. I just don’t see the author bringing up this issue more to the surface.

To conclude, this book isn’t just for me because I am not a fan of the writing style, I don’t get any attachment towards these characters specifically, and I do not see any worth mentioning throughout the storyline. I appreciate the author bringing this disabled person as the main character if she can be more specific in the storyline and focus on this specific person especially. Also, I appreciate her to brings out that coping mechanism in EDM music and the details on hallucination even though those two were not truly written well. Last, thank you for giving me the privilege of this book for an honest review.

Frank, please be my neighbor. Because I would like seeing you riffle everyone who bothers you as much as I like watching that

I was looking forward to reading this book in hopes of it being good autistic representation. However, I was not a fan at all. I feel like the main character’s autism journey is not as strong as perhaps The Love Quotient. Not nearly as strong. The book structure is weak and not fully developed—this should have been passed through several rounds of editing. This, in my opinion, is not a fully developed story. The book is very spicy, so if that’s your thing, go right ahead but I still think the plot and characters are not strong. I don’t think this was truly about an autistic woman as much as a very sexualualized story—while erotica still has its place, I wouldn’t say this is anything outside of that. I think that this book has good bones—a good storyline, ish, but it’s not fleshed out. The plot development is inconsistent and oddly timed. I truly had to force myself to finish this book. I didn’t hate it, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

A beautiful steamy romance that will have you reeling for more. When you are around your brothers friends and you fall for one you never think he will fall for you as well . Yet that all changed when they were alone together.

I was immediately drawn to the title of the book and after reading the description, I was sold. I don’t normally read romances, but this one about a nonverbal, neurodivergent main character was different than any book I’ve read before. The storyline was great, the characters were nuanced and well developed and I enjoyed the dual POV. Heads up, this book is spicy. There is sex… a lot of sex. A huge part of the main character’s journey is embracing her sexuality and sensuality. So if graphic depictions of sex aren’t your thing, I’d avoid this book. Personally, I liked them!

I don’t personally have autism so I can’t speak a lot on the representation. That being said, it did feel like the character was made to be autistic to infantilize her and make her more of the ‘damsel in distress’. The writing and story structure felt very ‘Wattpad-y’ to me (which could be the case, I didn’t read up on where it originated) but overall it just wasn’t my cup of tea.