Life Hacks for a Little Alien - Alice Franklin - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Alice Franklin

GENRE: Contemporary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: February 11, 2025

RATING: 4 stars.

In a Nutshell: A whimsical contemporary fiction coming from a young neurodivergent protagonist. Quirky story with many humorous, heartwarming and heartbreaking moments. Excellent use of the second-person POV. Great portrayal of how a neurodivergent mind functions (At least as far as I could tell.) Nice incorporation of wordy-nerdy content such as linguistics, libraries, and manuscripts. The final quarter is a bit weak, but the rest makes up for it. Recommended.

Plot Preview: (It’s a tricky plot to preview. This is an utterly barebones version.)

Our lead character is a young girl who feels like an alien in this human world as she doesn’t fit in anywhere. So when a late-night TV special brings to her attention the mysterious Voynich Manuscript – an ancient manuscript written in an unknown language and undeciphered to date – our “Little Alien” feels like the manuscript is also like her: an alien object incomprehensible to humans. Convinced that she will be able to understand the world better if she finds the manuscript, she does all she can to learn more about it. But given her loving yet busy father and her mentally ill mother, will she be able to solve this mystery by herself?

The story is written mostly in the second-person POV of the unnamed little girl, though we learn at the end who is doing the narrating. It begins when she is 4.5 years old and goes on till her mid-teens.

This has to be one of the most whimsically endearing plots I have read in a long while. Had the final few chapters been stronger, this might have even touched the 5-star mark for me. Still, even as is, it is a worthwhile story.

Bookish Yays:

📜 The uniqueness of the plot. I always love creative story ideas, and even more if they are from a debut writer.

📜 The brilliant use of the second-person POV. It’s anyway my favourite writing voice, but few books do justice to it. This is one of them.

📜 “Little Alien’, our little protagonist. Such an endearing character even with her quirks! I felt all kinds of emotions towards her, just like a parent does for their child.

📜 The decision of keeping the protagonist unnamed. Helps us identify with her emotion of feeling like a misfit and of not being seen.

📜 The limited number of characters, which is in tune with the small circle of connections a neurodivergent child often has. Of these, my favourite was her best friend Bobby for accepting her as she was instead of seeing her as an oddity.

📜 The bond between Little Alien and her dad – touching! He is the voice of reason in the book and yet he is also flawed, which makes him all the more real.

📜 All the linguistic content about words and word origins. Don’t know how general readers will feel about these inclusions but this word nerd was delighted!

📜 The role that libraries have to play in the storyline, showing how libraries become a happy place for everyone. Love libraries!

📜 The details of the Voynich Manuscript – fascinating! I was astonished to learn that it is real! 🤯

📜 The humour. Quintessentially British, strongly whimsical, utterly enjoyable.

📜 The depiction of Little Alien’s neurodivergence. To be clear, nothing in the novel assigns any condition to her directly, nor do her parents take her to a doctor or therapist. So I too will not assign any label to her, but will just say: it felt accurate to general neurodivergence, especially in how others (mainly adults) responded to her. I also love how sentences are repeated at times to emphasise her looped way of thinking. There are so many frustrating scenes: some where our lead is frustrated and some where she frustrates others. The metaphor of ‘feeling like an alien in a human world’ is brilliantly used.

📜 Quick-paced short chapters.

📜 The “Further Reading Suggestions” at the end of every chapter: sometimes sad, often hilarious. There are also many interesting footnotes, though these are a bit troublesome to navigate in the Kindle edition.

Bookish Okays:

🧠 The story spans almost a decade, but after the initial few chapters, we don’t get the timeflow clearly. Also, Little Alien doesn’t always sound her age, but older. Then again, I am not sure if this was because of the chosen narrative voice and the narrator (whose identity is revealed at the end.)

🧠 As we get the story from the child’s perspective, we see the parents only as she sees them: in their active roles as ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ rather than as individuals. This also means that we don’t know things that she doesn’t know, such as her mother’s exact mental illness. Just need to go with the flow on this.

Bookish Nays:

👾 A fair bit of profanity. Sometimes, it seems appropriate to the situation, but it is still jarring in a book with a child narrator.

👾 The ending. I don’t know what I was expecting, but definitely not that. To me, it didn’t fit in smoothly or logically.

Overall, though I didn’t like the final couple of chapters, I was still delighted with the rest of the book, and especially with its young narrator. The second-person POV just added to its appeal, though I know many readers will not enjoy the book for that very reason.

This is a debut work, and considering how beyond the box it is in its conception and execution, I’d love to read more by this talented author.

Definitely recommended to readers who enjoy quirky storylines with equally quirky characters. It would help if you enjoy the second-person POV as that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

My thanks to Little, Brown and Company for providing the DRC of “Life Hacks for a Little Alien” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.