Witty and warm, Life Hacks for A Little Alien, is a wonderfully absorbing read. Loved the style, loved the neuro-divergent voice, loved the insight into this particular character's view of the world, At times painful, at times heartwarming and at all times engaging.

Language is at the very heart of this book. We follow a neurodivergent girl from an early age to her teens and who comes to think of herself as Little Alien. She doesn't understand the world the way other people do and has her obsessions. The narrator tries to help her navigate through a very complex world.

She totally gets into the Voynich Manuscript - a book with a language no one understands - as it gives her hope she is not the only one from a different planet. Her friend Bobby and Little Alien find out the book is in London and go on a day trip to see it. A day that changes their life and the lives of a few other characters.

It's a funny book that shows that being different doesn't have to be that odd. One of the questions this book raises for me is: what is normal? There are a lot of grown-ups who look normal and say normal things, but then do things that are weird like her parents, her friend Bobby's mum, her teachers... I don't want to give away too much, so you'll have to read the book for that. But it's what these characters do that lingered in the back of my head.

I love the perspective the book is written in. You just feel how grown-ups can't deal with a child thar's different. As in my own childhood -I was late with walking and cycling- people assume Little Alien is stupid. It's all rather unfair.

Thank you NetGalley and Quercus Books - riverrun for the ARC

Couldn’t finish it, I began reading this in the hopes
It would give me insight to my own autistic
Child but it just made me a bit sad as I felt the child came across as a touch neglected.
DNF not for me but will give 3 stars as don’t think it’s fair to give lower to a book I haven’t fully read

As someone who has neurodivergent loved ones and who was fascinated by the Voynich Manuscript, I liked the author’s witty and honest accounting of her experiences.

A lovely book about words and feelings and being different socially. Well, aren't we all a bit different? When is this going to be less of a problem in society? When are we going to realize we have so much more in common than we differ and that we are all facing a very difficult world?

Books like these make me realize that perhaps there is a tiny bit of hope that one day people will see each other as that: fellow human being in the midst of it all. I need to hang to that flimsy bit of hope as society can be deafening and demanding. I do feel like an alien, let me admit...

I really enjoyed how Angel found her own way, even if she was stumbling and lost from time to time. The book was warm and it was funny and definitely deserves a place on my being-good-enough shelf on Goodreads, even if it wasn't literally a theme.

Life Hacks For a Little Alien by new to me author A. Franklin. I tried getting into this book, it was just too confusing. Couldn't follow the author's logic.
Blurb: Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our narrator is only a lonely little girl living in southeast England, who doesn’t understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript—an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language—Little Alien experiences something she hasn’t hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they’re from another planet?

Convinced the Voynich Manuscript holds the answers she needs, Little Alien and her best (and only) friend Bobby decide they must find this strange book. Where that decision leads them will change everything.

Narrated by an unexpected guide who has arrived to offer Little Alien the advice she’ll need to find her way, Life Hacks for a Little Alien explores a less-usual experience of the world, inviting us into the head of a child who doesn’t read her surroundings the way we might assume. Ringing with voice, humor, and heart, Alice Franklin will have you swinging from stitches to tears on the uneven path to finding a life that fits, even when you yourself do not.

Having worked with many different students, this book made the difficulties of non-typical learners not just visible, it tried to give a feeling of what it must be like not to be able to conform. The author does a good job showing the challenges and the original ways of thinking of such children and shows that there is often an unexpected hidden potential to be discovered. Life is never simple for them and they need to overcome their own anxieties as well as the expectations other people have, and those are more often than not very unclear or unrealistic. Insightfully written, great if you want to get a better understanding of atypical thinking and behaviour.

I have mixed feelings about the novel as it is a very extraordinary book from a number of aspects. First of all the second person narration is quite uncommon, which makes a really interesting storytelling.
The main protagonist is also an unusual heroine. She is a neurodivergent child. She thinks herself an alien (from hence the title of the book) because she feels that she is somehow different from the other people, and thinks it is because she is from a different civilization.
The story is about how the little alien grows up and finds her place in life where she fits in (although the Epilogue turns the things upside down a bit...)
It is a fascinating story, tender and loving. But I found the linguistic musings sometimes too lengthy, although being a teacher of English Literature and Language I was able to follow them. I wonder what a "civilian" can make out of them.
Life Hacks For a Little Alien is an unusual novel which requires time to digest it after you have read it. I can recommend it to anyone who loves books with gravity.

A quirky little read. Enjoyed the second person narration, not something you come across very often and I think it worked really well in this context. Interesting view on what it is to be different and done with compassion too.