I don't really know what to think about this book. It took me an age to read it, yet it was less than 300 pages. Just as the story was starting to progress, it jumped off of the rails and went right back to chugging along with very little direction. There is no obvious plot, no evident progression of even our main character and you're turning the pages expecting there to be more depth when suddenly, you have an epilogue thrust upon you. It's almost like the author gave up with the story, they just decided to end it before it got any more complicated. I wonder if it's just an issue of me not being the right reader for this book. I can appreciate what it was trying to do and there were parts I enjoyed reading - I think the tone of voice was great and had we stayed in childhood, it could have been even better - but it felt rather clumsily put together.

I struggled with the book. I found it hard to get my head round. I came to the conclusion that I am not the target audience.
It's well written and I am sure lots of others will enjoy it but not for me.

Life hacks for a little alien follows a young girl from toddlerhood, through her life growing up neurodivergent. The way the book is written from gives an insight into the thought processes and special interests of people who are neurodivergent. A read about finding understanding in a world where we feel we don’t fit it, and how books can help us all through our lifetime. This is a special read.

Unusual book about growing up with ASD; funny, heartbreaking and informative. I could have done without the ‘alien’ bits at the beginning and the end, as I felt that took away from the raw honesty of the story. I was also dismayed by the way schools were portrayed in their treatment of this child, as it is very far off the mark in my experience.

The book follows the main character of the 'little alien' and her perspective on life from being a toddler through childhood.

It focuses on her inability to express her feelings verbally and how the adults around her struggle to understand her.

The book definitely has a unique voice for a neurodivergent character and I felt that it helped give me a better insight into how the world can be perceived differently to those around us.

I liked the short chapters as it meant it was easy it pick up adhoc and I read it quite quickly, however it didn't grip me as a story.

Thank you to Netgalley for providing a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.
I was equal parts impressed and charmed by this, the little alien, being a child on the spectrum learning how to relate to the world, was a really fascinating protagonist. I enjoyed the use of the second person to relate to her frustrations and excitements through childhood.
Highly recommend for when it comes out!

Beautifully written this book is really easy to read. Really recommended particularly for those with an interest in neurodivergence and child development.

This books follows Little Alien, a young neurodivergent girl who views the world in a different way, and her investigations into a mysterious manuscript.
This was a delight of a book and I finished it in a day. I loved the gentle humour, and the use of second person (which doesn't always work for me), felt like the perfect choice here. Little Alien herself is a wonderful character. Through the writing I really felt like I understood the struggles she has to understand the world around her, and I appreciated her in all her uniqueness.
My only reservation was how the adult characters acted, particularly the teachers. Perhaps that is a little naive of me
but I felt like/ hope that their baffled and exasperated reactions to Little Alien are not how teachers would respond nowadays with training in SEN.
Overall I very much enjoyed the book and I look forward to reading more of this author's work in the future.

The unnamed main character is a neurodivergent girl navigating the world of adults which she finds so confusing and trying to find her place within it. It gave an insight into her world, where everything is taken literally. She's passionate about books and has a special fascination with the Voynich Manuscript; an illustrated codex, hand-written in an unknown script referred to as Voynichese. The whole book is a love letter to words, books and libraries and it was a warm and easy read

This is a delightfully quirky story, featuring an endearingly awkward child protagonist, who has to contend with a mother experiencing mental health issues and a father who just isn't coping too well. That is *in addition* to her own sense of being an alien on a planet where most people seem to be leaving their lives very differently from her.

I love the way that the writer uses the Voynich manuscript as a story telling device and the portrayal of the protagonist's relationship with her parents and her friend Bobby.

If the description above sounds appealing to you, then this book is well worth a read.

This is beautifully written, I came across it by chance and had an early copy through NetGalley based on the description. I wasn’t disappointed. The world created was complicated and beautiful. I was rooting for the little alien and her friend Bobby throughout. A gem of a book.

I couldn’t agree more with the synopsis: this book is a love letter to language and books.

I found the narrative voice such an interesting choice.
I liked how it gave me glimpses of Little Alien’s life but didn’t allow me to understand everything. Perhaps because not even Little Alien did.
I liked how I was discovering the world, a bit at the time, through Little Alien’s eyes.

This book is about belonging, understanding a world in which we don’t fit in.
This book is about books, and how they can help us throughout our lifetime.
This book is about family connections and friendship, and how they can shape our life.

In its simplicity, this book is pretty special.

That said, I found certain events in the book out of context or at least they didn’t make sense to me. There were some fast forward that left me confused.

I know that lit-fic focuses more on the character development rather than what happens around it, but I didn’t see grow or a hidden message or any type of learning from Little Alien’s story.

I enjoyed the story, it felt like an interesting coming of an age book, but once I finished reading it, I felt like something was lacking. Therefore I rated it 3 stars.

Although I enjoyed parts of this I didn’t quite connect with it, maybe that was the plan as the main character is neuro divergent and finds navigating the world challenging at times.

I so wanted to love this book, and parts of it I really did enjoy.
I found myself smiling and even laughed out loud and one point but then I felt the story lost it's way and didn't really culminate in anything, it just ended.

I loved the premise of this book. It instantly gave me neurodivergent vibes.

It’s a tricky book to give a succinct summary of. There is an anonymous protagonist, who feels adrift from life, struggles to understand those around her, she feels her otherness so heavily.

I struggled with the earlier part of the book, when our central character was a younger child. My struggle was due to the way she was treated, and spoken to, by those who were supposed to nurture and protect her. So many times I wanted to step in, and protect our protagonist from those around her.
As she grew older, I loved her enquiring mind, and was desperate for her to break free of the patronising attitudes, and ignorance she was surrounded with.

The epilogue completely bewildered me. I have sat and thought about it for a number of hours, and I am still none the wiser.

I wanted to love this book, but it didn’t hit the mark for me sadly. I’m awarding 3⭐️⭐️⭐️ as I know I am clearly not seeing something in the story, that other readers have.

It does not take long to understand the reason for the unusual second person narration by the eponymous Little Alien - we are embarking on a tender, joyful, heartwarming journey alongside a young neurodivergent girl experiencing and trying to make sense of the strange world of the neurotypical. Quirky and poignant, I loved every minute of this book and became totally immersed in her story. Highly recommended.

I adored this so very much!
The second person perspective was unique and I really enjoyed reading it.
This did an excellent job of capturing an autistic perspective and the intricacies of what it is like to come from a different planet.
I could see so much of my child and current self in our main character who was written with such heart and honesty.
I found the running background story of her parents really well written and captured perfectly from the perspective of a semi-oblivious child.
This was brilliant and I cannot wait to see what Alice Franklin does next.

Life Hacks for a Little Alien is a wonderfully quirky and original story about a neurodiverse young girl, growing up and trying to navigate her way in the world with a side order of linguistics and etymology.

We first meet the unnamed protagonist (referred to as Little Alien) when she is a toddler and starting primary school; she is overwhelmed by everything that she encounters and doesn't know how to react. For example, her teacher asks her 'are you doing ok there?' and she has no frame of reference for what 'ok there' might mean.

Moving to another school that's seemingly better set up to support children with different needs, instead she faces a wall of uncaring bureaucracy and corner-cutting. The only good thing to come out of that school is that she meets Bobby and the two strike up a friendship. We see Little Alien trying to make sense of the world, analysing people's choice of words and what they might mean. She knows that words are the key to everything but they don't come easy to her.

Time passes; Little Alien gets a new special interest - the Voynich Manuscript, a historical text that has never been deciphered. She hears that the text may have been left by aliens - this makes perfect sense to her and she tries to find out as much about the text as she can, hoping to crack the code. She buries herself in books, learning about how language is used and developed, the history of language and much more besides.

Interspersed in Little Alien's story are some wonderful nuggets of linguistic information, titbits about how words have developed and changed over time and will continue to change for ever. I particularly enjoyed the detail about how the word for 'tea' has developed!

There's so much to enjoy in this book, and I look forward to seeing what the author writes next.

I immediately loved this book. It grabbed me made me giggle and I was determined to know what happened to the main character.
I love their suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter very amusing I couldn’t help hoping they all real books the nerd in me is tempted to find out . Of course I soon realise that they were fictional
but it didn’t stop them being amusing.
I love the paragraph starting each section and describing time passing perfectly
I loved the description of autism and its challenges for this young girl is described so perfectly . In the story, the main character,who is autistic develop a special interest in a unique manuscript. translating and understanding this book becomes the reason for her to live.
As a young child, I would very much see myself in the main character of this novel my nose constantly in a book feeling alien to the rest of the population of planet Earth. is lovely to see such a positive representation of neuro diversity in a modern novel
The offer has a wonderfully light bright way of writing and her novel catches me immediately and held my attention throughout. I really didn’t want to put this book down.
At the end of reading the novel I was left wanting more I hope there’s going to be a sequel to this book
This is a debut novel. I can’t wait to see what else the author writes. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a sequel as I love this character so much.

I would recommend this book thoroughly to lovers of the Rosie project by Graham Simsion or Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail HoneymanOr any the Cassandra complex novels
By Holly Smale . If you love these books, I hope you will love this one as much as I do.
I read a copy of the novel on NetGalley UK and return for a review. The book is published in the UK in February 2025 by Quercus books
This review will appear on NetGalley UK, Goodreads and my book Blog bionicSarahsbooks.WordPress.com.

After publication it will also appear on Amazon UK

Life Hacks for a Little Alien is quirky and imaginative, with a humorous approach to life’s little challenges. However, the third-person narrative created distance from the main character, making it hard to connect. It also wasn’t quite what I was expecting, as the story didn’t fully draw me in. While creative and lighthearted, it may appeal more to readers who enjoy a detached, observational style.
Thank you for the chance to read this ARC.