The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily by Laura Creedle (review)

Lily has dyslexia and ADHD, a combination that makes school a nightmare. She loves literature, though, fondly remembering how her father taught her to read by sharing medieval texts with her while he drank. When she impulsively kisses Abelard, a handsome, highly intelligent boy on the autism spectrum, the two are soon texting, borrowing heavily from The Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise, which proves a powerful inducement to falling in love. While that part of their relationship is easy, the rest is more complicated, as Lily stops taking her meds and starts failing school, Abelard is accepted into a residential school in New Mexico, and Lily has to decide whether she wants to have an experimental surgery that might make her life more manageable. Creedle crafts Lily and Abelard's story with canny insight, highlighting but not belaboring the details of how their neurodiversity affects the processing of both little and big things. The other people in their lives also have credibly varied responses to the pair, from Abelard's mother's overprotectiveness and his father's ineffective befuddlement to Lily's sister's fierce loyalty and her best friend's well-founded worry over Lily's changes in behavior when she goes off her meds. Lily's self-awareness and humor emerge in unexpected moments, offering insights about relationships that reach beyond her circumstances but clearly wouldn't have been possible without them. Readers will fall in love with their love, as countless before them have with Heloise and Abelard's. KC