Switch

Written by A.S. King

Narrated by A.S. King

A surreal and timely novel about the effects of isolation and what it means to be connected to the world from the Printz Award-winning author of Dig.

Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her "Solution Time" class won't solve the world's problems, but she does have a few ideas what might. Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes. But Truda's got a crow bar, and one way or another, she's going to see what happens when she flips the switch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9780593397848

A.S. King

A.S. King is the award-winning author of young adult books including the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner Ask the Passengers, Everybody Sees the Ants, 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book Please Ignore Vera Dietz, and the upcoming Reality Boy. After fifteen years living self-sufficiently and teaching literacy to adults in Ireland, she now lives in Pennsylvania with her small, freakish family. Find more at www.as-king.com.

Reviews for Switch

[hannahkp-32010 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is unlike anything I've ever read. Is it a poem? A stream of consciousness? A YA novel? It's all of the above, all at once. Switch is not something that makes sense right off the bat, so jump in with the understanding that you'll need to give it about 50 pages to sync up with the flow of the storytelling style. But don't worry - those pages will fly by. The writing style uses brief sentences / unconventional punctuation / grabs the reader / heals the writer. (That's an example of how certain passages are written, if that wasn't implied clearly enough.) The whole novel isn't like that, and after the initial chapters, the seemingly sporadic train of thought backs off a little and the story begins to emerge more clearly. It's a perfect book for our time, written to help the author navigate a personal tragedy that somehow aligned with the world's need to step back as well. I highly recommend reading the author's Bookpage interview after finishing, as it helped me settle some lingering questions about her thematic intentions.

[brianinbuffalo · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Surrealistic is one thing. Downright strange is an abstract horse of a different color. For all the King fans out there, yeah I “get it.” Switch is about isolation and human connection.” I wish I could say I liked this novel on some level, but that would be an utter lie. I was totally confused in the first third of the book. To the extent that when the “Eureka” moments finally came, I was more perturbed than impressed/sated. Even the repetitive writing that is apparently meant to be artistic is downright irritating in spots.
Give the author credit for attempting to develop an intriguing premise: a world where time stops. I also admit that there are some genuinely humorous moments. But in the end, it’s like that one long and convoluted joke told at the Thanksgiving dinner table by an out-of-touch uncle. Even a solid punchline doesn’t make the time expended worth it.
Sorry, but no more A.S. King for me.

[carolesrandomlife · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My feelings are kind of mixed with this book. I have read one other book by A.S. King in the past and enjoyed her work so I was eager to give this one a try. This was a strange book. Very readable but strange. It was a shorter book and I flew through it. I did enjoy the book but I found it to be a lot more abstract than I expected it to be.

Truda lives in a world where time has stopped. The world has adapted but everyone is still searching for something that will get time moving again. All schools are now requiring a class where students will work on theories to solve the time problem. At home, Tru’s father spends his days crafting their home into a series of boxes while Tru just wants her mom to come home. Soon Tru discovers that she can throw a javelin further than anyone ever has and the rooms in her house are all turned on their side. It seems that everything in the world is off-kilter and needs a jump start to get back on track.

I kept waiting for everything to fall into place and start making sense but I think that the message in this book wasn’t as clear cut as I had hoped it would be. The writing style was also quite different with a lot of sentence fragments which I think worked within this story quite well but it did take some time to get used to. I didn’t really connect with any of the characters in this story but I felt compelled to keep reading just to see how time would get moving again.

I am glad that I read this book and I think that it could work well for some readers but others may have some trouble with it. This is a different kind of story and I found it to be quite imaginative. I wouldn’t hesitate to read more from A.S. King in the future.

I received a copy of this book from the Penguin Teen via Bookish First.

[lea.pearl · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm really not sure what I've just read...
Switch is really strange and I don't think it's in a good way in this case, unfortunately.

The writing style was...so incredibly difficult for me. It doesn't flow like a regular novel does. It's broken into different pieces essentially and those pieces are terribly confusing. I felt myself losing interest fairly often because of the choppy writing. The synopsis of this book is super interesting, I mean...that's why I wanted to read it, but I'm not sure where that description stemmed from as I feel like I've read a completely different book. And that is such a bummer!

I'm not even sure who to recommend this book too...
I'm sure there will be those that will love it...I just didn't, sadly.


Thank you, Dutton Books for Young Readers via NetGalley for the e-ARC to read and honestly review. I'm sorry it didn't hit the mark for me.