Things I Should Have Known by Claire LaZebnik
My Rating: 4.5 stars
Summary: Things Chloe knew: Her sister, Ivy, was lonely. Ethan was a perfect match. Ethan’s brother, David, was an arrogant jerk.
Things Chloe should have known: Setups are complicated. Ivy can make her own decisions. David may be the only person who really gets Chloe.
Meet Chloe Mitchell, a popular Los Angeles girl who’s decided that her older sister, Ivy, who’s on the autism spectrum, could use a boyfriend. Chloe already has someone in mind: Ethan Fields, a sweet, movie-obsessed boy from Ivy’s special needs class.
Chloe would like to ignore Ethan’s brother, David, but she can’t—Ivy and Ethan aren’t comfortable going out on their own, so Chloe and David have to tag along. Soon Chloe, Ivy, David, and Ethan form a quirky and wholly lovable circle. And as the group bonds over frozen-yogurt dates and movie nights, Chloe is forced to confront her own romantic choices—and the realization that it’s okay to be a different kind of normal.
Things I Should Have Known dealt with so many issues so well, I was surprised. I was hooked by the second chapter.
Chloe Mitchell is a blonde, popular, smart high school student who has an older sister, Ivy, who is on the autism spectrum and who she rarely talks about. Chloe mostly keeps her school and home life separate, but then she decides that Ivy should have a boyfriend. She finds someone in Ivy's class, Ethan, but along with Ethan comes his brother, David, her snarky classmate who always makes snide comments to her. Both of them have to go with their siblings because neither Ivy nor Ethan feel comfortable with being alone.
I have some experience with people on the autism spectrum, but not that much. However, I found Chloe and David's relationship with their siblings wholeheartedly real. Both love and care for their siblings so much, but they also don't treat them like they're entirely different. At one point Chloe talks about how Ivy is still a person, and you can still be annoyed with her; it's just a human reaction. The author's biography said that she has a child who has autism, so I think she really captured this dynamic really well.
Some things I didn't like were Chloe's relationships with her boyfriend and her best friend and the pacing. Chloe begins to spend less time with them and more with her sister, David, and Ethan. However, she tells them several times it's for Ivy's sake and not hers, but both always act like she's being selfish because she's not hanging out with them. Also??? One time Chloe tells them about a date she set up, and they crash it, even though she told them not to, making things ten times more uncomfortable. Then they proceed to not understand why Chloe didn't want them there, which I was so angry about. I suppose it was more of a situation where Chloe didn't fully explain everything because she didn't want to, but I still feel like they were really insensitive and didn't even try to understand where Chloe was at. The pacing was kind of weird towards the end, but I don't want to spoil anything so I'll just say it suddenly speeds up in the last ten percent.
I really enjoyed Things I Should Have Known. It had such a positive representation of people on the autism spectrum and their relationships with their families, which is a first for me in the YA field. Some people could really learn a lot from this book, and I think you should read it.
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