Grace is an autistic fifteen-year-old struggling to navigate life with the help of her best friend Anna. She falls in love with the new boy, Gabe Kowalski, and deals with changes in her life.
The State of Grace contains examples of:
- "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Mum starts inviting over her cool friend Eve from university, who starts taking over her life. Grace complains, "You don't have to actually start dressing like twins, you know. You've already got the same tops, the same shoes, and now you're in the same lipstick. It's freaky." Her thirteen-year-old sister Leah kicks her in the ankle. She yelps.
- Character Tics: Grace taps her fingers to calm herself.
- First Kiss: Grace kisses Gabe at Charlotte's birthday party due to a game of Spin the Bottle. She is surprised to find that she likes it. They start going out afterwards.
- Gayngst: Polly, who works at the stables, hasn't talked to her parents since they threw her out for being gay. She lives with her girlfriend Melanie.
- Heartbreak and Ice Cream: The night Grace's dad went to Greenland for a shoot, her mum bought huge amounts of junk food, which she keeps in the garage.
- Married to the Job: Grace's dad is a wildlife cameraman who's gone on shoots for months at a time. Even when he's at home, he spends most of his time editing footage in his study.
- Potty Failure: Grace once peed her pants at her classmate Holly's fifth birthday party because the balloons were scaring her. She assumes Holly has forgotten about it, until they run into each other at a restaurant on Grace's sixteenth birthday and Holly makes fun of her for it.
- Scandalgate: Anna uses "Cidergate" to describe Leah and some other underage kids drinking hard cider, resulting in Leah being hospitalized due to alcohol poisoning and lots of other kids getting in huge trouble.
- Sensory Overload: Grace has a hard time blocking out irrelevant sensory input, especially when she's tired. Her school has set up a quiet room as an accommodation, but it's not as helpful as it was intended - it's too close to the gym and the cafeteria, so it smells funny, and loud, thudding basketballs can easily be heard.
- This Is Reality: During Grace's first date with Gabe, she thinks about what movies taught her would happen - they would look at each other for a moment, look away, look back, and then one of them would look at the other's mouth, and the other would understand that to mean "I want to kiss you." Instead, they both drink their coffee in silence, then both lean over to put their coffee cups down at the same time, and their faces collide, which turns into a proper kiss.
- Toxic Friend Influence: Leah starts hanging out with a group of popular kids who introduce her to underage drinking.
