Wish You Were Her
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An autistic YA homage to The Shop Around the Corner with a pinch of Cyrano, Elle McNicoll's Wish You Were Her is a triumph!
Allegra Brooks is an eighteen year old actress who is secretly autistic. When a journalist publishes a scathing profile on Allegra, she decides to take the summer off in Lake Pristine, to visit her slightly estranged father. There, she befriends the booksellers of Brooks Books and decides to help them plan the popular Lake Pristine Book Festival. As she gets closer to Simon, the openly enthusiastic and neurotypical of the two, she realizes it's really Jonah, the boy she argues with constantly and finds a bit off-putting, who she's actually more and more drawn to. As the summer wraps up and the festival approaches, Allegra has to make some decisions about what she owes to others, and to herself.
Elle McNicoll
Elle McNicoll is a bestselling and award-winning novelist and screenwriter. Her debut, A Kind of Spark, won the Blue Peter Book Award and the Overall Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, as well as Blackwell’s Book of 2020. She is a four time Carnegie nominated author, and was shortlisted for the Books Are My Bag Awards 2020, 2021 and 2022, the Branford Boase Award 2020 and The Little Rebels Award 2020 and 2021. She was also honoured in the US with the Schneider Award, 2022. Her second novel, Show Us Who You Are, was Blackwell’s Book of the Month and one of The Bookseller’s Best Books of 2021. Her first fantasy middle grade, Like a Charm, was nominated for Best Children’s Book for Older Readers in the first ever Week Junior Book Awards, and was highly praised in the New York Times. Her debut novel, A Kind of Spark, has also been adapted for television, is Emmy nominated and won Best Children’s Programme at the Broadcast Awards and a Royal Television Society Award. She is twice nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the winner of the 2025 Books Are My Bag Young Adult Readers Award for Wish You Were Her. Her adult debut, Unapologetic Love Story, published in 2026.
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