Author: Emily Katy
Category: Memoir
Publisher: Monoray
Publication date: 28 March 2024
Blurb: ‘Emily’s moving book is a powerful testimony that shines a light on the continued failure of health services to provide any kind of meaningful improvement for autistic people. Should be essential reading for mental health professionals and anyone with autism in their lives’ – FERN BRADY, author of Strong Female Character ‘
This book will bring so many readers self-recognition and comfort.’ – DEVON PRICE, author of Unmasking Autism
To the outside world, Emily looks like a typical girl, with a normal family, living an ordinary life. But inside, Emily does not feel typical, and the older she gets, the more she realises that she is different. As she finally discovers when she is 16, Emily is autistic. Girl Unmasked is the extraordinary story of how she got there – and how she very nearly didn’t.
Still only 21, Emily writes with startling candour about the years leading up to her diagnosis. How books and imagination became her refuge as she sought to escape the increasing anxiety and unbearable stresses of school life; how her OCD almost destroyed her; how a system which did not understand autism let her down; and how she came so close to the edge that she and her family thought she would never survive.
In this simple but powerful memoir, we see how family and friends became her lifeline and how, post-diagnosis, Emily came to understand her authentic self and begin to turn her life around, eventually becoming a mental health nurse with a desire to help others where she herself had once been failed.
Ultimately uplifting, Girl Unmasked is a remarkable insight into what it can be like to be autistic – and shows us that through understanding and embracing difference we can all find ways to thrive.
Review: I have been following the author on X/Twitter and Instagram for a while. When this book came out, I was interested in reading it, however also had a bit of wariness as she was 22 when this book was written, and was diagnosed at 17. I was expecting to find it a bit irrelevant to me, who had been diagnosed at 44…
I was pleasantly surprised to be drawn in, seeing myself in ways that I had rarely seen before. I’m also one of those kids who lives in my imagination, and I hadn’t seen that represented much in books featuring neurodivergent characters, let alone in a memoir.
As her story unfolded, I had to wonder how I managed to get through high school without the issues she had, even though our experiences seemed quite similar. It also goes to show how even the most supportive family won’t stop mental health break downs.
This book weaves facts about autism with her story in a way that is easy to read and engaging. For anyone who is trying to understand autism, especially in females, this memoir is well worth reading.
Leave a Reply