Yes! The aliens, non-humans and neuro-diverse humans were set off against each other brilliantly.

I'd also add "Children of Time" by Adrian Tchaikovsky for aliens who are still alien but also manage to be people.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-tim...

This is a great first-contact novel, probably my favorite example of this genre. The book concludes with some ideas about the nature of consciousness that I found to be legitimately frightening. I read the book years ago but it feels even more relevant now as we watch new forms of “intelligence” like ChatGPT beginning to emerge.

I don’t know dude. It was so difficult to read. The way the aliens were presented was very original, but the storytelling kind of put me down. All the characters seemed flat, the environment was hard to conceptualize, a lot of made up words. And what was this thing with vampires? Who needs vampires in a sf book?

There is also Portia, the possibly more alien life form in Echopraxia, the sequel to Blindsight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echopraxia_(novel)

What did you think about echopraxia?