A Boy Made of Blocks by Keith Stuart

Book Description: 

Discover a unique, funny and moving debut that will make you laugh, cry and smile.

Meet thirtysomething dad, Alex
He loves his wife Jody, but has forgotten how to show it. He loves his son Sam, but doesn’t understand him. Something has to change. And he needs to start with himself.

Meet eight-year-old Sam
Beautiful, surprising, autistic. To him the world is a puzzle he can’t solve on his own.

But when Sam starts to play Minecraft, it opens up a place where Alex and Sam begin to rediscover both themselves and each other . . .

Can one fragmented family put themselves back together, one piece at a time?

Inspired by the author’s experiences with his own son, A Boy Made of Blocks is an astonishingly authentic story of love, family and autism.

Publication Date: 1st September 2016

Published By: Sphere

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My Thoughts: I’m truly not sure how to even begin this review, A Boy Made of Blocks just totally blew me away. What a wonderful book that will definitely be in my top reads this year. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Alex struggles to cope with his autistic son Sam and Jody his wife has had enough and asked him to leave for a while to sort himself out. He’s obviously got problems from the past but I was so irritated with Alex to start with. I really wanted to give him a good shake and say grow up, but everyone is different faced with these situations.

I loved Sam, he was just adorable and Alex came to grow on me as we got more in depth with his problems and grief, and grief is a hard thing for anyone to cope with.

“Here is a secret about grief. It’s kind of an open secret, because everyone who has experienced it knows it to be true, but here it is anyway. Grief never really goes away. Time doesn’t heal. Not fully. After a while – a few months, a few years maybe – grief retreats into the darkest corners of your mind, but it will lurk there indefinitely. It will leak into everything else you do or feel; it will lurch forward when you don’t expect it. It will haunt you when you sleep”.

I read this part over and over again because this is what grief is, it really touched me.

I have to say I liked all the characters in this book, they all have different parts to play in either Alex or Sam’s lives. I loved the way they developed through the book and I became so invested in them I found this book really hard to put down.

A Boy Made of Blocks is an uplifting story, yes it’s sad at times but there’s humour and reading it, I got a warm fuzzy feeling. It really is a truly wonderful story and shows you a little bit of what it’s like to be on the spectrum. Keith Stuart has written an absolutely magnificent book and I’ll be highly recommending it to everyone.

My Rating 5/5