I have loved reading books set in Scotland for years as someone who lives here and over the past year I have started to really look for books with neurodivergent representation, and in many ways particularly autistic representation and this is a book that has both so I was extremely excited to read it when I first saw it announced.
Truthfully, Yours follows Charlie who has found herself working in a bookshop in Scotland after going viral for publicly calling out an actor, on a show she loves, for being ableist, where she discovers Page who is a fellow actor on the show and she is going to need to share an apartment with. I really really loved reading and annotating this book for so many different reasons and it did everything I wanted it to do and more and I’m so grateful for that.
The representation was clearly done from personal experience which I really liked to see and helped it be authentic and something that I could connect with. I also really liked how this lead to many other characters acting because it meant that you could truly see how neurodivergent people are treated once people know that they are different and how in turn that can impact them in the long term but it also showed how autistic people can socially struggle while wanting friends and how people can support Charlie without doing much other than understanding and not doing things they know will have negative impacts when they can.
This was great to read as someone who really connected to Charlie as a character and saw many parts of myself in Charlie and the ways that she struggled but with the way things were developed and demonstrated I can see that it could also benefit those who know someone who is neurodivergent and gives a wider perspective and show what it is like to have to live like this.
The other reason that I originally looked into picking this up was because of the setting of Scotland. This was really well done and I liked the way that Caden Armstrong wrote Scotland in many ways with characters who are not Scottish but it does not ruin the experience for Scottish readers in ways that other books sadly previously have which did worry me about this book but again you could easily see that Caden Armstrong wrote this after having spent time in Scotland. You could see how an American would view things that I see as normal but it was done in a way that didn’t discredit those things and I just loved watching Charlie get to know Scotland and fall in love with it.
I also really liked the bookshop setting as a book lover, it is always great to find a book set in a bookshop and this is definitely a bookshop that I would absolutely love to one day visit.
I loved the romance for so many reasons but particularly because I loved the two characters as individuals and they also worked together as a couple really well, so I rooted for them from early on. I liked watching them develop a friendship which later turned to more and how much they got to know each other which helped them know when the other needed them and also what they both did so that they could support the other best they could was great to see.
Along with a great romance this book had so many other fantastic relationships from family bonds and friendships. I loved meeting Page’s family as the book went on and getting to know them along with learning about their past and seeing how they were there for each other particularly with Page and his sister Lilian. Charlie and Page both also had their own friendships which I loved reading about with how much Charlie’s friend meant to her and in turn how much she knew and wanted the best for Charlie, willing to do as much as she could to help. The friendship I loved reading about most though was the one Page had with Theo and Sandhya, his cast mates and really close friends.
Overall this was a romance that did exactly what I wanted it to and more, leading to me loving it and highly recommend that other romance book lovers pick up. I cannot wait to see what else Caden Armstrong releases in the future, particularly in this world because I can see many characters that we could follow in future books and threads that I would like to learn more about.
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