What to Say Next (2017) is the second young adult novel by American author and lawyer Julie Buxbaum. Buxbaum’s first two novels were for adults, but she received greater attention for her young adult debut, 2016’s Tell Me Three Things. What to Say Next was named Best Young Adult Novel of the Year by PopSugar. The novel addresses themes of grief, self-discovery, and neurodivergent identity.

This guide refers to the Delacorte 2017 e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide discuss grief, death of a parent, bullying, death threats, suicidal ideation, anti-fat bias, and use of ableist slurs.

Plot Summary

David Drucker, who identifies as non-neurotypical, is shocked when Kit Lowell sits at his lunch table. Kit is relatively popular, and David has always sat alone, so he feels uncertain of how to approach this social interaction. He abruptly references the recent death of Kit’s father, Robert.

Kit is surprised that she finds David’s bluntness refreshing; she has struggled to know how to relate to her friends Annie and Violet since her father’s death. Later, she walks out in the middle of her physics class. David follows, finding himself suddenly interested in Kit. They sit together quietly, which Kit enjoys. She returns home instead of going back to her classes, however. Her mother, Mandip, tends to stay away from emotional topics.

David enjoys Kit’s continued presence at his lunch table. His mom, Amy, encourages his friendship with Kit. Trey, who David thinks is his guitar teacher but who he will later learn is a social skills tutor, pushes David to participate in a guitar showcase, but David declines.

Kit’s friends confront her about the distance between them, which causes Kit to flee in advance of an important newspaper club meeting, which ultimately costs her the editor-in-chief position that she’s vied for. She thinks about how losing his parents impacted her father, making him more protective and practical. This attitude, she notes, did not stop him from dying in an accident.

Mandip presses Kit about avoiding her friends and spending time with David, even as she dodges calls from Robert’s best friend, Jack. Kit and David spend more time together, but Kit continues to have sleepless nights as she wonders over how the accident could have been prevented (later, she reveals that she was actually driving the night of the accident, which has left her plagued with guilt even though she was not at fault).

David’s sister, Lauren, whom he calls “Miney,” suddenly returns home from college. David assumes that Miney is ill, though he will later learn that she is struggling to adjust to college social life and academics. Miney offers social advice as his friendship with Kit evolves into a crush.

Kit and Jack search Robert’s office for important end-of-life documents. Kit finds a document that says that her parents were getting divorced due to infidelity. She assumes that her father was unfaithful, but when she confronts Mandip, she realizes that Mandip had an affair with Jack.

David, with Miney’s help, gets a new haircut and wardrobe, which causes his classmates to gossip about him, the consensus being that they now find him attractive. David only cares about Kit’s reaction and is pleased when she compliments his new look. He later realizes that two of Kit’s friends, Justin and Gabriel, have stolen a notebook where David records details of interactions with and characteristics of different classmates to help him categorize them as trustworthy or not.

Kit dwells on her mother’s affair. David encourages Kit to ask her mother why she had the affair; Mandip characterizes the event as a mistake that she regrets, particularly since her husband died uncertain that Mandip still cared about him. Kit works on the “Accident Project” with David, a plan to help with her insomnia by figuring out when Robert’s accident could have been prevented. Kit feels nauseous when they get to the site of the accident and quickly runs away.

When David gets home, Miney informs him that the contents of his stolen notebook have been published online. This causes David to recall the trauma of the “Locker Room Incident,” during which Justin and Gabriel shoved him into a filthy toilet and then locked him in a locker for hours. David becomes overwhelmed with anxiety as he realizes that Kit will be able to read his thoughts and observations in the leaked notebook. People send him death threats and ableist slurs.

Kit opens the link but stops reading when she realizes that the journal is David’s. She goes to a local pizza parlor to force Justin and Gabriel to return the journal. Annie and Violet side with Kit, though they caution her about the contents of the notebook. David takes several days to recover enough to return to school. Miney tells him that she, too, has been struggling socially at college.

Kit returns David’s notebook. Members of the football team surround David and threaten him, but David, who trains daily in Krav Maga, beats them in a fight. The principal wishes to send David to another school, but David’s parents object that David is the victim, not the aggressor. The principal only agrees when Kit intervenes to defend him.

The fight makes David popular, which confounds him. At Annie and Violet’s insistence, Kit invites David to a party. They attend, and Kit drinks alcohol. The two kiss. Unable to sleep that night, David works on the “Accident Project” and realizes, to his horror, that the math of the information he’s been given doesn’t add up. He insists on meeting Kit and originally postulates that her father was also having an affair, as the calculations only make sense if a woman was driving the car.

He realizes that Kit was driving and loudly exclaims this, first happy to have solved the puzzle and then angry that Kit has lied to him. Kit is horrified both at David’s reaction and that her secret is out. David realizes too late that he has failed to take Kit’s feelings into account. Miney encourages him to apologize but notes that Kit might not forgive him. She returns to college, seeking to work though her own problems.

David plans a multi-step apology that explains his neurodivergence (which he feels is closest to Asperger’s syndrome, even if it is no longer a recognized diagnosis), apologizes for not considering her feelings, and eventually asks her to speak with him again. The novel concludes as the two decide that they will be friends again. They leave their romantic future uncertain.