Review: Please Don't Hug Me by Kay Kerr
Refreshing and insightful, Please Don't Hug Me is an authentic, own voices novel about a young woman with Autism who is just trying to make it through her final year of high school. Nothing in Erin's life is going quite right. She's looking forward to going to Schoolies, but that may not happen now, thanks to the fact that she lost her job at Surf Zone thanks to a pretty unlikely turn of events that involve a stray poo in the change rooms. Her boyfriend is, well a bit of a jerk really. And although her best friend Dee is clearly a very caring and compassionate person, things aren't going to well for Dee at home and she wants to escape it by partying hard with the popular crowd--people who Erin can barely stand. And then there is some kind of incident with a boat that means that Erin's big brother Rudy no longer lives at home. Erin begins writing letters to Rudy, telling him everything about her day to day life, and the unfortunate incidents that occur along ...