Ask The Passengers Review

TITLE Ask The Passengers
AUTHOR A.S. King
PUBLICATION October 23rd 2012 by Little, Brown
READ June 10 to 11, 2013
SOURCE Purchased

strid 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.

Ask The Passengers is the third A.S. King novel that I have had the pleasure of reading. Having read a few in the past I have come to have some pretty high expectations when it comes to her work and this one did not let me down at all. A touching story about identity, love and acceptance this novel had my heart and took me on a journey of discovery.

Astrid Jones is in love with a girl and she doesn’t know what that means. We watch her explore the possibilities and try to figure out what the emotions that she is having mean. I loved the questioning approach to all of this. There were no strong definition lines and through her philosophy projects at school we really get to explore the issue with her deeply. I loved how she applied these projects to what was happening in her life and got into debates with people at school. A.S. King tackled how a teen trying to figure out if she is gay or straight feels as everyone tries to put her into one box or the other. Astrid didn’t know where she belonged, she knew what she was feeling at the time and didn’t know what it meant for the future. I can’t even express enough how I loved that this story stressed that it’s OK to be in the middle and not be sure.

The characterizations here were so strong. In the beginning I actually found that I was having trouble getting into the story, despite that I had an intense hatred for Astrid’s mother and a spot in my heart for Astrid. To me that screams great characterizations, I was having some trouble with the plot, but warmed up to the characters fast. Claire, the mother, was so worried about what everyone thought about her and this feeling extended to much of the small town that the characters were living in. Her favoritism towards her other daughter drove me crazy and her way of ignoring her husband really got to me as well. But Astrid had my love from the beginning. The inner turmoil that she was facing and the pressure from the people around her felt like a weight on my chest and I wanted to help her in any way that I could (even though I couldn’t because it was a book, but that was how into it I was!) We also meet friends of Astrid who are dealing with a lot of the same issues that she was. We see their ups and downs on the path to coming out to the community and it isn’t pretty.

As I mentioned before I did have a settling in period with this one. For about the first 20% I just wasn’t getting into the story as I had expected to. I think that may be due to the strange storytelling that was used to convey the story’s message. As Astrid lies on her picnic table in her backyard she looks up to the sky and watches planes fly by. While she does this she sends all of her love up to the passengers on the planes because she doesn’t know what to do with her love herself. We get short snippets where we are a passenger on the plane and the moment that they feel the love that Astrid sends. This took me out of the story a few times at the beginning because I wasn’t too sure where that element of the story was going but once I got a feel for it and began to understand the meaning I adored those parts. I loved how in the end they really came full circle, it was incredibly heartwarming.

I think this is an important novel and is one that any teen who is questioning their sexual orientation should have available to them. The message conveyed is strong and it definitely has the power to make people feel like they are not alone and that it is OK not to know for sure. I am happy to have gotten to go on this journey with Astrid and thank A.S. King for writing such an important story.