Reading my Way into Love and Other Incurable Ailments:

Stories about neurodivergent characters have fascinated me for years, long before Love and Other Incurable Ailments was even a glimmer of an idea.

Maybe because writers don’t always get these characters right, I notice when they do. I pay attention to the way an anxious mind is portrayed, to the contradictions and quirks, to the things that make a character difficult or strange—and to whether the story allows that character to be a complicatedly human, even if she may be unlikable to some readers.

These are some of the books that stayed with me as I was writing Love and Other Incurable Ailments. They helped shape the way I thought about Serenity: anxious, difficult, strange, vulnerable, and, despite it all, worthy of love.

Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio

Little Beauties by Kim Addonizio was the first book I remember reading that had a neurodivergent character, a believable narrator who struggles with OCD.

Addonizio’s novel doesn’t shy away from flaws, darkness, and painful pasts of her characters. Yet it offers moments of compassion, connection, lightness, and unexpected beauty. The story and character quirks mirror what I aimed for: a strong character who survives.

Like Diana, Serenity isn’t cured at the story’s end because real life doesn’t work that way.

• What I learned: Don’t fix her.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Christopher Boone is a fifteen-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, although he is never labeled as such, which makes sense, since the story unfolds through his eyes.

I enjoyed being immersed in a mind that experiences the world differently. Mystery drives Christopher’s logical, literal perspective, and the story offers a sense of how it is to see and feel as a divergent. Allowing readers to inhabit a mind that works differently from their own, even though we may not understand it, became key to me.

And I’m glad to know that works for some readers. Story Circle Reviews describes Serenity this way in their review of Love and Other Incurable Ailments:

“As she tries to “organize” her neighbor’s messy kitchen and frets that her stomach pain might be the severe bacterial infection listeriosis, I want to yell at her to shut up and relax. In other words, she’s a real, three-dimensional human being.”

• What I learned: Let readers inhabit another mind.

Banishing Verona by Margot Livesy

I loved Banishing Verona for demonstrating how characters Zeke and Verona are both deserving of love despite their flaws and misunderstandings. The novel’s attention to Zeke’s neurodivergent perception, emotional honesty, and the hard work of connection inspired me.

What struck me: everyone, no matter how out of step with the world, is worthy of love, sensitivity, and understanding. My job became creating a character worthy of love and friendship without making her less difficult.

• What I learned: Give readers a reason to love her.

The First Bad Man by Miranda July

This is a book about embracing the uncomfortable. The story follows a neurotic, emotionally vulnerable woman, Cheryl Glickman, who rigidly organizes her life. She clings to routines, rituals, and mental rules. Her insights as an outsider, and her emotional fragility and intense inner life give the story genuine humanity.

The First Bad Man refuses to sanitize pain or oddity as it asks readers to empathize. Cheryl’s journey involves toxic dynamics, yet I found it oddly inspiring as it invited me to step into another character’s strange mind.

I wanted Serenity’s journey to feel equally approachable and hopeful while still shaking up the reader’s perceptions.

• What I learned: Don’t be afraid of the uncomfortable.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Like Eleanor in Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Serenity is a socially isolated woman navigating trauma, grief, and the awkwardness of human connection. Both are guarded, stuck in routines, and prone to overanalyzing everything from social cues to bodily sensations. And both set their sights on a wildly improbable love interest.

Often, it’s something unexpected that jars a character out of her comfort zone. For Eleanor, it’s an unexpected friendship. For Serenity, it’s a box of discarded love letters.

Getting out into the world also shows both women the importance of finding their tribe. If you’re surrounded by people who make you feel bad about yourself, sometimes you need to find your people—the ones who see you differently, and who make room for who you actually are.

Eleanor’s story helped me find a path forward for Serenity, and sometimes finding yourself begins with finding your people.

• What I learned: Isolation needs a way out.

Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle:

Twice Shy is a category romance that doesn’t look away from its characters’ insecurities, outdated self-perceptions, or past pain. As the story progresses, both leads learn to trust, open up, and find connection.

The idea that flawed, hurting people can be deserving of love, redemption, and belonging lines up with the emotional truth I tried to create at the heart of my story. It also helped me think beyond Serenity to the other characters in my novel. They each carry their own struggles—from alcoholism and family dysfunction to losing a mother or becoming a widower. They aren’t there simply to help Serenity change. They’re hurting, too, and they reach out to one another.

That became important to me. I wanted Love and Other Incurable Ailments to be a story not just about one woman finding her way, but about people discovering that they don’t have to navigate their difficulties alone.

• What I learned: Let connection happen between imperfect people.

The Maid by Nita Prose

In The Maid, Molly’s “difference” becomes part of a mystery narrative where the world, truth, and other people’s secrets aren’t always what they seem.

It’s that exact sense of being “out of sync” that echoes my interest in neurodivergence, anxiety, and grief. The story also highlights how important it is to challenge our first impressions and assumptions about other people. Not everyone picks up on social cues. Not everyone gets the joke the first time around. It doesn’t mean they lack intelligence.

That was important to me with Serenity. Her anxiety and the way she interprets the world can sometimes make her seem irrational or frustrating, but those qualities aren’t there simply to make her quirky. They’re part of how she experiences the world.

• What I learned: Difference isn’t a plot device. It’s part of who a character is.

Agatha Arch is Afraid of Everything by Kristin Bair

Agatha IS Afraid of Everything—Literally! She is also anxious, abrasive and yet hilarious. Despite her flaws, I found it impossible not to root for her as she stumbles toward healing. While her antics may sometimes border on the absurd, her emotional journey feels authentic and deeply relatable.

I wanted to balance that same darkly comic self-awareness with Serenity’s inner struggles without turning her into a punch line, to explore humor in the absurdities of being a flawed human.

• What I learned: Let her be funny.

Writing the beautifully difficult

I’m grateful for every one of these books and the way they opened doors in my imagination. They remind me that there are countless ways of being human, and each one deserves compassion and curiosity.

My hope is that Love and Other Incurable Ailments might one day sit on a shelf beside these books—not because Serenity is exactly like any of these characters, but because she belongs to the same wonderfully imperfect family of people who don’t always fit neatly into the world.

These books taught me that a character doesn’t have to be fixed to be lovable. They don’t have to overcome every fear, conquer every neurosis, or become a completely different person to deserve connection. And readers can care about someone who might occasionally drive them absolutely nuts.

Serenity isn’t a clinical case study whose behavior has to conform perfectly to an anxiety profile. She’s also a person who wants something bad enough to do things that scare her.

Sometimes the most important thing a story can say is simply: You are allowed to be here.