My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads rating: 4.07 with 14 ratings (as of 3/14/2019)

Winner of the 2019 Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators SPARK award!

Everyone we love, everything we know, is going away… and only an autistic boy can stop it.

Alex knows exactly how many steps it takes to get from his home to Mason Middle School. This is normal.
Alex knows the answers in AP math before his teacher does, which is also normal. 
Alex knows that something bad is coming out of the big screen in his special needs class. It’s pushing images into his head, hurting him, making him forget. Alex pushes back, the screen explodes, and nothing is normal any more. 
Giant screen televisions appear all over the city. The programming is addictive. People have to watch, but Alex cannot. 
Sophie, the sentient machine behind all this, sees the millions and millions of eyeballs glued to her and calls it love. To Sophie, kids like Alex are defective. Defectives are to be fixed…or eliminated.…more

200 Word Review

I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book so I could give an honest review.

Losing Normal by Francis Moss is relatively short, less than 300 pages, but do not let the length fool you into thinking it does not have a lot to say. There is a lot of action in this short book.

Alex, a highly-functioning autistic boy, likes things to stay the same. He knows how many steps it is from school to home and, to him, that is normal. He knows all the answers in math. That is normal. The strange giant television screens that are being put up all over are making him forget and that is not normal. Only the “defective” kids, those that are immune to the televisions, like Alex can save the world from becoming television watching zombies. What ensues is an interesting novel that shows how quickly technology could take over.

Losing Normal is not a post-apocalyptic novel. It shows the collapse of society by our rapidly advancing technology getting out of hand and beginning to think for itself.

This novel would be appropriate for those as young as middle school to read but it is an interesting story adults would enjoy too. I found it to be a quick, easy, enjoyable, and thought provoking read.

Review published on Philomathinphila.com, Smashbomb, Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble on 3/14/19.

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult (YA)
Print Length: 266 pages
ISBN: 1732791023 (ISBN13: 9781732791022)
Publisher: Encelia Press
Publication Date: November 5, 2018

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