Reviews with content warning for Excrement - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

This book is so beautiful. I read it a long time ago and loved it. I reread it because Jeff Woodman did the audio and I’ve been enjoying listening to him do the LJG books. He’s just delightful and though he uses a different voice here (so he sounds unfamiliar), I was not disappointed. He’s a fantastic voice actor!

But besides that, the book was just as brilliant, funny, and heartbreaking as ever. I don’t know whether this is a realistic representation of autism or being on the spectrum in general, so I’ve left that to the side. However, I realized this time around how much I resonated emotionally and in some ways mentally with the main character Christopher. Like how he likes some colors and detests others, and uses these markers or rules to order his world. I did that when I was little too, just like having food preferences, as a way to feel some sense of control in the world and what happened to me. These things make sense to me and I still have certain preferences that might seem eccentric or ridiculous to most people, but it’s brilliant to read the perspective of a character who makes sense of the world this way and to feel seen a little. In this way, I think the book does speak broadly to neurodivergence in general.

I also just resonated emotionally in the way of how as children sometimes we just can’t understand how or why adults do the things they do. And the adults that bother to meet you where you are, are like gold. This book has me thinking a lot about how we’re all trying our best, and sometimes even our best can still hurt the people we love. Or, rather, the people tasked to care for us can really truly love us and still make terrible mistakes. Not that that excuses their behavior, it just shows how messy life really is.

My heart was with this character from the get-go and I was rooting for him all through. This one will stick with me for awhile.

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itsnotalakeitsanocean's review against another edition

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0.25

People have GOT to stop recommending this as good autism representation (unless we're comparing how far representation of autistic characters have come since this book was published). Especially because the author didn't intend for the protagonist to be autistic and just latched onto the idea later on.

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ashielovestoread's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was such a brilliantly written but sad, like super sad book😭 there were funny moments, yes, but I can't get over the sad reality of this. There are parts where I had to skip the info dumps and it is individual preference ig. Overall I loved this book and it made me real sad.

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clor0's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Cristopher is so me fr

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saritaadam's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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trintrin's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative inspiring mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

omg I’m actually teary after finishing this book. It’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. Christopher was such a delight to follow, I loved reading all his little theories and observations, especially in the first half. But the second half, oh man

I never expected this to get so sad. That scene of him reading all those letters from his mother broke my heart. And the entire London tube scenes shittttt I can’t fully formulate an opinion on his parents but I hope their family finds a way to heal and cope. And that Christopher truly fulfils his dreams and lives happily ever after.

The only thing that bothered me a little is that this stopped being a murder mystery pretty early on, but that’s got to do with the way this book is marketed ig

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