In a small town in rural Scotland, Addie, an 11-year-old with a passion for books about sharks, discovers during a school lesson the long history of women branded as witches simply for being different or withdrawn from others—women tortured and condemned to death. She begins fighting for a symbolic reckoning with this ancient injustice because she recognizes herself in it. Her autism, though relatively mild, sets her apart in ways that invite the same rejection. It is something she must hide, something that demands exhausting efforts at adaptation that others—even her neurotypical sister Nina—do not fully understand. Like other books in the Geodes series—named after those "seemingly useless, rounded stones that hide treasures of colored crystal if you know how to open them"—this story offers "a different way of seeing the world around us: one that is curious, open, interested, and never afraid."
The series was created by the publisher Uovonero, which has long paid careful attention to making reading accessible through thoughtful design: typeface, page layout, paper quality that prevents glare and shows no bleed-through from the reverse side. The novel was a success in England. Elle McNicoll, a young Scottish debut author and voracious reader frustrated by the scarcity of stories with neurodivergent protagonists like herself, began writing her own—and succeeded in crafting a deeply convincing one. Watching her in videos about creative writing, she does not read as autistic in the obvious way, much like Addie and her older sister Keedie, who experience autism at the high-functioning end of the spectrum. Because McNicoll's own lived experience mirrors her characters' so closely, we enter their minds with vivid clarity, discovering the difficulties an autistic person faces—especially in sensory perception, processing information, and navigating relationships. Central to the story are Addie's bonds with her two very different sisters. Keedie, herself autistic, becomes Addie's anchor. She understands her struggles because both spend vast energy adapting to a world built for people without autism. Comparing notes becomes a gift: they learn to accept each other's limits. Nina, whose arc spans the widest change, carries vital truths about being the sibling of an autistic person. Through her, we learn much about our own "normal" assumptions. Together, the three stand proudly beside Addie as she fights the majority with quiet autistic determination, demanding a memorial to the women condemned as witches. In honoring that spark within her—and within all those like her who are misunderstood and rejected for being autistic (autism, Addie insists, is not something you have; it is something you are)—the novel speaks directly to the fear, distance, and bullying that follow. Stories like this one give us hope that such harm will grow rarer still.