Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Ask the Passengers- A.S. King

Title: Ask The Passangers
Author: A.S. King
Source: Bought new (Kindle)
Series: Standalone
Rating: 4/5














Goodreads Summary:

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.


I still do not fully know how I feel about it to be honest. I liked the message the book was getting across but I found all the characters to be a little bland and there was a a ton of great ideas but there was a lot of loose ends.

Astrid the narrator for the majority of the novel, occasionally there is a few from the passengers who she sends her love it and we see how her sending her love as affected them. The part of the passengers feeling what she is sending to them or occasionally hearing her thoughts is never explained. I also found Justin to be one of the more interesting characters but he disappeared for a good chunk of the second half of the book. Astrid's family was very dysfunctional. Her mother seem to loath her father and she hardly leaves the house, her sister tries to please her mother even thought she disagrees with a lot of the things she does and her father just floats. He is involved with his children but he completely ignores his wife.  I found that Astrid\s friends were not always supportive of her either and they judged her for her confusion about her sexuality.

The plot had so many great side stories in it in regards to all of the characters in this novel but none of them were really explored or explained. The protagonist family moves from New York City to a small town because her mom wants to keep the house in the small town in the family but beyond that there is no real detail about what led them to decide to move, and why is Astrid's mom so frigid towards her and why does she never leave the house. How did Astrid\s parents end up where they did and where did Justin disappear to.  This book left me feeling a little lost and it felt incompletely.

This book was good, but I think that someone younger would have gotten more out of it than I did. I wanted more depth to the novel that it just could not provide to me but I am glad I read it. The story was engaging and I wanted to keep reading it, I needed to know where Astrid's story was going.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing excellent informations. I’m impressed by the details that you’ve on this web site. I will come back soon.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Definitely very problematic, although a good message overall.... I'm curious about which books might send the same message/be about the same subject, but handle things much better character wise.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Miseducation of Cameron Post handled the topic of being a gay teenager really well and I would say it is one of the best books I have read this year.

      Delete