Review: Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

This book is about Astrid who is struggling to figure out who she is, and even though she has an inkling, she is afraid of acknowledging it. We follow her as she tries to come to terms with her identity and her life in a small town in a dysfunctional family. 

I’m quite conflicted about this book. Sometimes I really liked reading it and other times I thought it was a bit meh. The ending also caught me by surprise, because this is one of those books that had a good chunk of pages left and I had settled down to watch the final bits of the story come together, when suddenly it was the end and all the pages left were interviews, discussion guides and a preview…So disappointing. Especially because I didn’t really feel like the the ending was that great. I was expecting a bit more redemption from all the people in Astrid’s life. 

I found pretty much all the relationships in this book to be terrible. Like I said Astrid has a pretty dysfunctional family where the mother is a workaholic who is so afraid of the small-town-gossip that she never goes anywhere and is best friends with her daughter’s best friend. The dad is a stoner and the little sister is pretty selfish. Granted she is just a kid and a product of her parents but still. Astrid’s best friend is not afraid to throw her under the bus to save herself and then acts like it’s no big deal, because Astrid is basically a loser anyway. Astrid’s girlfriend is pushy and I feel like this is maybe the only relationship that is truly “fixed” by the end. I feel like we are supposed to know that the other relationships are being fixed in the future, but I feel like I would have wanted more, especially from the best friend, who, to be honest, seemed kind of shitty throughout the book. Like, who is best friends with your friend’s mother, especially when you know the mother and your friend don’t get along. I don’t know. I just thought all the relationships were pretty shitty and unresolved by the end. 

This book has a magical realism element in the fact that Astrid watches airplanes and sends love to them, and we follow some of the passengers as they feel this love and how it affects their decisions. I’m a little torn about this, because I thought it was a fun idea, but the way it was implemented didn’t really do anything for the plot, so it felt a little unnecessary. If the author wanted that element so badly I feel they should have done something more with it than just a few vignettes that have no impact on the main plot. 

In the end I gave this book 3 stars out of 5. Maybe more like 2,5. I did like it at some points, but in the end I just think it could have been so much more.