Book Review: Unmasked by Ellie Middleton
Rating: 3 stars of 5
I have mixed feelings about this book.
On the one hand, I am so proud of the author for having written something like this whilst still so young. She has clearly learned a lot about neurodivergence and how her brain works since she received her own diagnosis and I want to recognize that that takes a lot of work. It’s wonderful that she is sharing what she has learned along her own journey in an effort to help others. What an accomplishment!
The book itself is really lovely, and the vibrant colors on the cover, spine, and endpapers help set the tone for the rest of the material. The first chapter is a very good introduction for anyone curious about neurodivergence, and I do think that on the whole, this book would be a good read for someone who is either newly diagnosed with AuDHD, ADHD, or autism or for someone who loves a neurodivergent person and wants to understand their internal world a bit better. It’s a very readable book with a lot of good information in it.
On the other hand, though, I thought that the book had one major flaw. There is a notable lack of citations throughout. Even in places where the author is presenting information she obviously did not come up with herself, references and citations are blatantly absent and when they are included, they usually direct the reader to a web link rather than an actual scientific study (there are some exceptions to this, but not many). So when references are there, they are most often poorer quality references to secondary sources rather than primary ones, but there are many instances when the citations were just not included at all. In several places, for example, she discusses studies or study results without citing the studies. In another place, she uses a direct quote but doesn’t provide a citation for the reader to see who / what she is quoting. It was quite frustrating for me as someone who compulsively checks citations / references as I read, and I thought it diminished the credibility and integrity of her work. References are not indicated with in-text citation numbers, either. They are just listed by page number in the back of the book. This could be seen as a stylistic choice, but in this type of work, I think it would have been better to provide the in-text citations as well.
For this reason, and because I did find a couple of minor grammatical / typing errors, my rating for this book sits in the mid-range. I would still recommend it as a resource for people who are interested in reading about neurodivergence from different perspectives, but I would not recommend it as a solid source of reliably cited information.
Content advisory: The book contains profanity.
You can support this blog by purchasing your copy of this book from
Amazon through the link provided.