Review: Ask The Passengers by A.S. King

Title: Ask The Passengers
Author: A.S. King
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Little, Brown
Publish Date: October 23, 2012
Source: Library

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a YA fiction fan!
• You don't mind tough subjects.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Astrid Jones desperately wants to confide in someone, but her mother's pushiness and her father's lack of interest tell her they're the last people she can trust. Instead, Astrid spends hours lying on the backyard picnic table watching airplanes fly overhead. She doesn't know the passengers inside, but they're the only people who won't judge her when she asks them her most personal questions . . . like what it means that she's falling in love with a girl.

As her secret relationship becomes more intense and her friends demand answers, Astrid has nowhere left to turn. She can't share the truth with anyone except the people at thirty thousand feet, and they don't even know she's there. But little does Astrid know just how much even the tiniest connection will affect these strangers' lives--and her own--for the better.

In this truly original portrayal of a girl struggling to break free of society's definitions, Printz Honor author A.S. King asks readers to question everything--and offers hope to those who will never stop seeking real love."

My Two Cents:

Astrid is hiding a secret from the people in her small town since she is so scared about how they will take her news. The only ones that she can tell about what's going on with her and how she has fallen in love with another girl is the passengers in the plane above her small Pennsylvania town. This book is full of hard topics and I wanted to hug Astrid throughout the book because no one should have to feel ashamed of who they are and who they love.

Yeah, this is a topic that has been done before but this is definitely a worthy story. One thing that makes this book stand out from the crowd is the usage of magical realism. If any of you have read my blog for any length of time, you may have picked up that I really, really like magical realism. The use of this element in the book really made the story seem a little fresher and a little bit more interesting.

I did find myself wanting to know a little bit more about the characters and their motivations. This book was definitely action and story arc driven and I definitely felt like I wanted to know a little bit more about why people were doing the things that they were doing in the book.

Overall though, I thought that the story was a good one. I definitely think this book is worth a read. It covers a very important topic and does so with a twist.