I don’t know. I have been debating this book since I started to read it. I really, really wanted to like it. Smale [] combines well-developed characters with laugh-out-loud humor….Readers will be drawn into Cassie’s life and won’t want to leave. This neurodiverse tale is ripe for discussion.” —BOOKLIST, Starred Review Holly Smale is an exceptional writer and this book is a treasure. Everyone should read it and everyone will love it' Lindsey Kelk

Cassandra] is smart and often funny, and her chaotic attempts to set the world to rights are poignantly rendered' THE TIMES I don't any autistic adults, I know a few children with autism so I don't have anyone in the adult category to go by.The Cassandra Complex follows a forensic police scientist who is having the worst day of her life. Her apartment is broken into, the mice at the laboratory she works at are blown up, and her mentor and former lover is kidnapped. The Cassandra Complex is a reference to the feeling of knowing disaster is imminent, yet you can't stop it. In this book, set about 50 years in the future, the bio warfare and extremely high population seem to be leading the world into collapse. According to Bolen, the archetypes of Cassandra and Apollo are not gender-specific. She states that "women often find that a particular [male] god exists in them as well, just as I found that when I spoke about goddesses men could identify a part of themselves with a specific goddess. Gods and goddesses represent different qualities in the human psyche. The pantheon of Greek deities together, male and female, exist as archetypes in us all... There are gods and goddesses in every person." [10]

The book begins with her getting fired from her job, getting dumped by her boyfriend, and her living situation with her roommates is pretty well destroyed. So far, it was reminding me very strongly of Penny Reid's Neanderthal Seeks Human just without the huge dose of humor. (One of my top favorite books, btw) Cassandra doesn't care much for her PR job in the first place, considering she just isn't a people person. However, nobody wants to be fired and lose their financial stability, so she is naturally distraught. Even more upsetting is her unexpected break-up with her lovely boyfriend Will of four months. She truly cares for Will, and was completely blindsided by his sudden extraction from their relationship. Will seemed to genuinely admire Cassandra's intelligence and wasn't put off by her differences. What seemed to be a breaking point for him was her issue with opening up to him about her feelings and sharing herself with him. No matter how many times he asked her to share what she was thinking and feeling, she didn't know how to give that to him. Spy thrillers; political thrillers; techno-thrillers; "plain old" thrillers... now we have a bio-thriller, a detective novel (in the near future, so it's also sort of SF) that's a race to discover who destroyed an out-dated experiment in sociobiology and kidnapped its main critic. There is, of course, a secret or two to be discovered; what they are and who gets to them first is what moves things along. But it's not as easy to control time as she first thinks and through a series of time re-runs we discover Cassandra's history, her odd personality traits and who the woman she is trying to avoid at all costs is. In a 1988 study, Jungian analyst Laurie Layton Schapira explored what she called the "Cassandra complex" in the lives of two of her analysands. [5]Before reading this I really hoped this book would center Cassandra. I’ve read so many (romance) books featuring autistic characters at this point, where there’s always a midway point where the character either gets diagnosed or explains to others around her that she’s autistic. That this book set out with a very obviously autistic person (special interest, struggles with sensory input, gets meltdowns, communicates differently, takes things literally, struggles with certain foods) made me really happy initially, because I thought the focus would be about her living her live as an autistic woman. It would’ve been such a nice change from the other stories I’ve read so far! I thought we’d read about how she finds a job which suits her, about how she finds a friend who loves Greek myths just as much as she does, and generally speaking gets to live her best life. In the Cassandra Complex, a forensic scientist is woken up in the middle of the night to find masked intruders stealing everything they can from her desk and computer. They almost shoot her, and threaten her. They also reveal that her ex-boyfriend, a prominent scientist, has been kidnapped because he's kept a secret from her. Seeing the other characters through Cassie’s lens and reading about their mean comments and behaviors made most everyone an unlikable character, which isn’t fun to read about. The reading journey became much more enjoyable for me as little changes were made that helped Cassie make some connections with others and see more little kindnesses. These were the good parts. But I have to admit I wanted more good parts for Cassie. The ending was definitely better than the beginning, but I still didn’t love the end. I didn't want it to end, but I also couldn't stop reading. I really, really loved it' Keris Stainton Instead we get a story about Cassandra clinging onto a non-functioning relationship, changing herself and crossing her own boundaries constantly to please her ex, whilst also clinging onto a work environment that doesn’t suit her. It’s an incredibly depressing read if you view it this way.