Show Us Who You Are

Starred review from September 5, 2022
By exploring ethical dilemmas around digital immortality and neurodivergent identity, McNicoll (A Kind of Spark) grants this speculative novel the intensity of a psychological thriller. In near-future London, autistic 12-year-old Cora Byers is a budding investigative journalist navigating her mother’s death, relentless bullying, and whether to “care about normal” at school. When she meets Adrien Hawkins, a homeschooled boy with ADHD who’s unabashedly self-accepting, their blossoming friendship brightens her days. Adrien’s father, wealthy Magnus Hawkins, runs the Pomegranate Institute, an innovative corporation that’s developing lifelike interactive holograms with a goal of digital immortality, preserving loved ones and celebrities after death. The institute is eager to recruit Cora as a subject so that they can learn to re-create “that kind of brain.” Despite strong misgivings from her father—and from Adrien, once a grudging participant—Cora joins the program, in the process discovering new truths about grieving, her autistic identity, and the Institute’s true goals. Neurodivergent author McNicoll writes Adrien and narrator Cora with nuance and verve, interlacing deep moral conundrums with raw emotional revelations to make a disturbing, potentially prescient read. Most characters cue as white. Ages 8–12. Agent: Suzie Townshend, New Leaf Literary.