Reviews tagging 'Mental illness'

Switch by A.S. King

9 reviews

peggyoliver's review

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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sunsetcity's review

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challenging emotional funny slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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betweentheshelves's review

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challenging reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I'll just say, this was out there, even for A.S. King. Usually her books border on surrealism, but this one felt like it just went a little too far. Maybe I read it too fast? However, there are elements in this book that do connect to everything that happened in the last year. Maybe I just wanted a little more clarity by the end.
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colleensreadingadventures's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I think my brain broke reading this! 🤣🤣
Honestly I don’t think I’m smart enough or even have a good enough imagination to wholly appreciate the story. But the writing is excellent and certainly creative. 

Switch is an extremely unique book. It involves some magical realism mixed with a story about a family in crisis. “Real” time has stopped for the world and the world is looking for answers. Tru is one of the students tasked with helping through a class called Solution Time. She and her classmates are each tasked with coming up with ideas on how to keep going with numerical time standing still. 
In Tru’s home she notices there is a switch in her house, she doesn’t know what it is for, but she does know that her dad keeps building boxes around it to stop anyone from touching it. And every time she takes some of the boxes down her father just puts more up. 
Tru’s life is a bit of a mess. Her mom is not living at home, her dad quit his job and continues to build all these boxes. Her brother is wound up so tight and her sister is some sort of sociopath. Tru’s only thing that’s all her own is her new found ability in throwing the javelin. Which she can throw farther than anyone has ever thrown before. 
Can Tru get her family back on track, figure out how solve the worlds current crisis and get all the boxes taken down in her home? Only time will tell! 

While for me Switch was a little on the bizarre side I really enjoyed Tru’s story. The story was never boring. The cast of characters were interesting, especially Tru’s family members. The sister was definitely a scary character and I would have had her committed at a young age if I were her parent. That or put locks on the outside of her door..lol. 
I was fully invested in the outcome, waiting to see if Tru could fix her broken family, if she could ever get to the switch, and she would fix time. 
Kudos A.S. King for such a distinctly refreshing novel. And a big thanks to Penguin Teen allowing me to review the ARC. 
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caleyk_1's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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bella_cavicchi's review

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adventurous challenging dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

3.75 stars. A.S. King, a surrealist queen! SWITCH didn't gel for me in all places, but its social commentary on time -- how time warps emotions and vice versa, how healing shouldn't (isn't) dependent on the passage of time -- through the eyes of a teenager is King's sweet spot. A really interesting read.
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booksandbigideas's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Gonna hold this close to my heart as someone who has my own slow-down, time-stop moment and is a psychology nerd. 
I highly suggest watching any of the book tour events if they’ve been posted (some have)...such a healing experience.
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mxrumphius's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced
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thesaltiestlibrarian's review

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challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC. The opinions expressed herein are mine alone and may not reflect the views of the author, publisher, or distributor.

This book helped me figure out what I dislike most about the YA genre, simply by being everything that I do like. Switch starts on June 23, 2020 when time has ceased to move forward. Tru Becker and her father and brother all have to figure out how to live in this new world, and how to pick up the splintered pieces of their old lives, even as Tru’s father makes their house into a plywood maze to avoid those pieces.

Right away we can see parallels to how Tru feels as a teenager in this bizarre world, and how everyone is trying to figure out how to cope with the absence of time. A.S. King dedicates the book to the class of 2020, and she does a terrific job of not only understanding teens, but making them real on the page too. Almost ten years ago now, I read King’s Please Ignore Vera Dietz and haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. I’ve turned it over and over, dwelt on the issues in it, and can even remember some of it word-for-word. Something about it body slammed me, and I’m pretty positive now that it’s because King saw me, a teen on the sideline, even though we’d never met.

What this book does so, so well is present its characters and problems as real. Flesh-and-blood. When YA takes the dramatic approach and blows its problems out of proportion, the camp makes me itch. I can’t connect with any of the characters, especially when the problems stem from people simply not communicating.

“But, Caitlin!” you say. “In your review for When We Were Infinite , you said you can’t stand people not communicating!”

Here’s the thing. The noncommunication in Switch happens because the family is struggling to move toward communication and away from silence. The Beckers are actively chugging up a steep hill in an effort to learn who they all are again, together and separately. To say anything more is to ruin the discovery, so mum’s the word.

Switch proves, like so many books, that the absurd, science fiction, fantasy, surrealism, magical realism--all are perfect tools for exploring the hard issues in life. More so than literary fiction, I’d reckon. King killed it here. 
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