[arc review]
Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Wednesday Books for providing an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Release date: August 15, 2023
Tilly in Technicolor is Eddings YA debut, told in dual pov, featuring two neurodiverse main characters. Tilly has ADHD, and Oliver is autistic.
Tilly and Oliver met on a flight from Cleveland to Europe, where they’ll both be interning for Tilly’s older sister’s nail polish brand for three months.
This book had a very rocky start for me, and I spent so much time contemplating whether I even wanted to progress past the first 10% because Tilly made me want to pull out my goddamn hair.
Much like Eddings other book called “Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake” that featured a character with ADHD, this had me in a perpetual state of feeling stressed out.
Let’s break down some of what happened within the first 10% — things like when Tilly didn’t even care to check what her assigned seat was on the flight and just assumed the position of a window seat because she thought she was entitled to it? Or the way she kept asking for copious amounts of ketchup packets from the flight attendant? Truly how unaware is she? Ever think that this is a regulated piece of transportation and that you can’t just have literal handfuls of ketchup at the blink of an eye? And then the way she just took Oliver’s napkins from him without permission? I can’t handle the air of entitlement that is coming across here, where everything seems to need to be catered to her and her only. What gives her such specific privilege?
And I get that she has ADHD and to cope with the overstimulation of other sounds she might find reprieve in a conversation with another person, but to expect a complete stranger to take on that unsolicited and unexpected burden just because you came unprepared is uncalled for. I would have likely lost my shit if I was seated beside Tilly.
And if you thought all of that bothered me, don’t even get me started on how Tilly apparently barged past and sprinted out of a flight full of passengers, and proceeded to sprint through an international airport. One, how is that even possible if you’re not at the front of the plane? It’s not. Secondly, is that not suspicious behaviour to be sprinting off of a plane and through an airport (she’s going through customs, not a connecting flight) — would a TSA agent or security not pull you aside? I guarantee you if she was a person of colour, this would not happen as blasé as it was written.
Moving on to Oliver — I loved reading his passion for colour theory and the extreme detail that went into that with the hyper specific Pantone colours. It made for an effective and immersive visual experience.
The romance here to me felt forced. I think the story would have still been just as good had it been strictly platonic because both Tilly and Oliver were not well versed in having friends, so navigating this space together with their shared understandings already provided growth.
I felt like everything was crammed into the last 30%. The mother and sister just suddenly turned a new leaf towards Tilly and it wasn’t believable, at least not with how less than fleshed out it was for the reader.
I also wish that the blog posts were italicized as a way to differentiate it from the regular text since it was hard to tell most of the time where it started and ended.
While I didn’t find much enjoyment in the characters or the plot, I did think this had some good moments of neurodiversity by giving examples of how someone with ADHD or autism might stim, have interludes of passionate infodumps and tangents, or not be able to pick up on ordinary social cues.
Rep: neurodiverse main characters, sapphic side characters
Tropes: forced proximity, one bed