Based on the description I was excited to read this story. I was completely disappointed. It was a chore to get through and I would have put the book aside without finishing it if I hadn’t needed to review it. Time stopped on June 23,2020 and nearly a year later Tru and her classmates are tasked with finding a solution to start time again. But even though time supposedly stopped it is not like her life is one continuous day. Rather she talks about going home at the end of each day, what happened last week, etc., referring to it as pretend time. Tru’s solution time project in school took up only about half the book. The other half dealt with Tru’s family who lived in a house with a switch no one was allowed to touch (I have no idea what the switch was for.) Tru’s father covered the switch with bigger and bigger boxes and then built boxes in all the rooms of the house. Tru’s bedroom was box #7, her brother lives in box #11. The kitchen, living room, every room in the house has a box number. And while home Tru spends her time with a crowbar ripping out the nails holding the boxes together trying to get to the switch. I assume the boxes symbolize the boxes we tend to put ourselves in and Tru is trying to tear down the emotional walls people put around them, but the whole thing was just too bizarre for my taste. If I’d been into reading between the lines to discover the hidden meaning in all the symbolism in the book I might have enjoyed it. But I just wanted to read a good story. This book missed the mark. Thanks to Dutton and Netgalley for sending me an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Loved the unique formatting of this book, but at times during the story I was a little confused and wish I got to know the characters more. What I did love was how thought provoking this book was and would definitely read more from this author.

I have been struggling with books by A.S. King. I cannot put my finger on what exactly stands out to me but they just don't work for me. It is absolutely me as a reader, I must not be the right reader for this author. I struggle to connect to the characters and plot but can absolutely see how other readers will soak this up like a sponge. This just did not work for me and it proves that not every book is for every reader.

I only got maybe 20% into the book. The premise of it is definitely interesting, but the writing is confusing, making it hard to follow the story. I am not a fan, but I am sure others will be.

Too surreal. I think this book was about a javelin throwing prodigy with a switch that stops time in her house? But I can't be sure because this book was so surreal that I had no idea what was happing and could barely follow the plot. The prose were, in typical A.S. King style, heartbreaking and beautiful but I was lost as can be reading this book.

DNF'd around 25%. This book was...weird, and I couldn't really get into the language or the writing. It had such promise with its premise and the overall intrigue of the box, but overall, it was a letdown.

This book was a wild ride. I really didn't understand what was going on for the majority of the book, and can't say I really understood it even when I finished it. I will say it was a very quick and compulsive read because I was hoping it would make more sense eventually. I have never read another A.S. King book, but it sounds like weird books are par for the course, so I guess if you like their other books for their weirdness you might like this one too! Ultimately I think this was just a case of the book not being for me!

This was an uneven read for me. I usually enjoy experimental writing and formatting, but with this book, I really, really struggled to get my footing. There were flashes of brilliance, and on the whole I enjoyed the book more and more as it progressed. In the end, though, I wasn't even entirely sure what I took away from it. It's hard to imagine "booktalking" this one to my students.

A.S. King writes brilliant novels that readers can enjoy even if they don't fully understand what they have just read. "Switch" is a foray into magical realism that is both a story about a high school girl and her splintering family and also a race to figure out why time stopped nearly a year before and what (if anything) can be done to fix it. It is easy to see that writing this novel mid-pandemic helped the premise of this novel develop, but A.S. King always creates characters that are dynamic, nuanced, and engaging while also being different than those she created in previous novels. The novel's stylic elements of combining sentences, phrases, and use of / to advance the story differentiates from the standard look and feel of Y.A. A new storyline and creativity is refreshing and makes this novel stand far and above other current YA offerings. Once again, well done, A.S. King.

I’ve read a lot of weird books, but I think this takes the cake??? I don’t even know what happened after finishing it. But I did finish it in one day, because when you’re on an endless stream of wtf-ery, you can’t just stop!

I don’t have a solid rating yet, because I’m still processing, but I’m leaning toward 3 stars. I both liked it and I didn’t.

Were the boxes and the turning house metaphors? (But a third party saw it, so I guess at least some of it was real?)

Who exactly was this Carmichael person? (An internet friend turned real life friend who didn’t bat an eye at any of the weird shit going on?)

Is there really a 10-year-old girl flying around like a damn bird? (How would time stopping even cause that?)

There were also really serious things discussed, like the abuse that “sister” wrought on the family (both physical and psychological), but somehow even though I think the family was taking it seriously and trying to heal, it felt not very serious while reading?

Did Tru really throw a javelin across town??

I kind of like that some of it might not be real, or a metaphor for something real, because I like unreliable narration and a story leaving me to think. I’ve never read this author before, so I’m not sure if their use of slashes and repeating sentences occurs in all of their books or just this one. It threw me off at first, but it grew on me. It was cool to see how much meaning could fit into a sentence full of / thoughts / happening / like this. In the end, there was also a good message about time, the way people treat each other, and society as we know it.

I think the biggest thing leaving a bad taste in my mouth and affecting my overall feelings, though, was the aphobic language. A character calls Tru’s brother creepy for not having a gf “by now” because he’s in his 20s and in college. He went through some bad shit, which would affect anyone’s dating life, but even had that not happened, NO ONE IS CREEPY FOR NOT DATING. No one is abnormal for it either. And of course, his parents (particularly his mom) and even Tru make a huge deal out of his dating life and, I hate to spoil anything here but I have to say it, everyone is finally like “yay! You’re normal! Dating is good, it was just trauma!” when he finally admits to having a gf. Like, I’m glad he didn’t actually turn out to be a creeper weirdo, but this felt like more bad rep for aromanticism anyway. It sucks even more because Tru never once thinks or talks about anyone romantically or sexually, and could be aroace herself!!

You know, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this book when I read then synopsis but it sounded so unique I knew wanted to read it. Well, I finished it and I have some…thoughts. Perhaps some jumbled thoughts but they exist nonetheless.

Content warning: mentions of animal abuse and suicidal ideation

Y’all. I am…confused. I’m totally not sure what to make of this story. That is, I get the underlying meaning and overall theme but this book was just…weird. It had a magical realism element to it, and I have to admit magical realism confuses me and I often feel dumb for not “getting it.”

Some of my major qualms with this novel involve the world-building. Okay, yes. Time has stopped and the world has to figure out how to continue without time itself to regulate us and the world. I can see how this is a reflection of the real world. Everything we do revolves around time and how we go about our day, what we do, how we love our lives. We’re so bent on doing the next thing, being the next thing, wanting to move on from the present or wanting to relive the past. Sure, this is a contemporary novel but I still vouch that contemporary novels have to have world building in them to make me feel like I’m in the novel. No, it doesn’t have to be as extensive as a fantasy or sci-fi novel but you gotta give me something.

I don’t know how I feel about Tru in general. I don’t know her well enough to come to a conclusion. Okay, she wants people to care for one another and it’s obvious that had to start internally and at home with her own family. The whole house thing is…something else, and I wondered if it affected anyone else? Surely not? And then the whole thing with Tru’s brother and that girl. Like…is this some weirdly implied pedophilia? Again, I’ll say that I am CONFUSED. What about Tru’s sister? What was the point? It’s twisted and malicious and almost ruined everyone’s life but… We don’t physically see her. Is she even real? Is she a metaphor for something? I don’t know!

What I did “get” (finally!) is the house righting itself and becoming normal again. Maybe this book is telling us that we need to communicate better, be open and honest with our families and our friends more often so the world literally doesn’t turn upside down. We don’t have the luxury of time stopping for us and giving us a chance to tell everyone how we feel, but rather we have to make time to spend with one another. I think there is some metaphorical truth here but it felt like one tangled yarn ball just trying to get there. So weird.

I don’t even know who I would recommend this book to. If you like weird, trippy things then…maybe this is for you? It’s a quick read but there are definitely some unanswered questions. Like why the hell a javelin?

I think this book is going to CRUSH it for current teens--it's so the pandemic experience. (I often personally really struggle with magical realism/magical realism-adjacent stories because it's hard for me to understand like...what's really supposed to be happening? But with AS King I always get it, I'm always plugged into the emotional core of the book.) This is the weirdness of this moment.

The book starts out difficult to read. The text is unusual, jarring with the slash marks. The nature of the story is unusual, time has stopped and Tru's house has plywood boxes, covering the switch. Her father built boxes around boxes, hers is box#7 with a Tru sized hole in it, her brother’s #11. It’s odd.

After a little while the story starts to cohere, the flow finds itself, and I sank into the story.

What we have is a misfunctioning family, it’s torn apart. The older sister was a pathological liar, of extreme. Her mother left, the father lost his job. She the sister is now gone, still calls and tells more lies. The house shifts and these aspects in the story feel like metaphors for what is going on with the family, or society. The metaphors are abundant in the book.

One could look at the stopped time as a correlation to the pandemic, or perhaps it is more closely related to the family.

It’s a wild ride of a book, and I have a feeling teen readers will connect with the book. It approaches difficult subjects and deals with them, but not in a straight-forward manner.

Thank you to NetGalley for an e-ARC of Switch by A.S. King.
In true A.S. King style, Switch takes the reader on a ride into the unknown. The story seems to be set in an alternate universe but is really an alternate mental state. A.S. King is a master of using symbols and allusions that keep the reader guessing. This story reminded me of Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, but without a satisfying ending. Delving into the minds of a family plagued by mental disorder, King creates confusion, unknowns, and apprehension. King did an excellent job making the reader understand the turmoil of mental illness, but I had trouble joining the journey. Having read other novels by King, this is a book I am glad I read but will have difficulty selling it to teen readers.

A beautiful surrealist novel from A.S. King that explores the trauma of abuse and the importance of understanding emotion.

For fans of "This Is How You Lose the Time War," "Switch" delves into the tricky aspects of time, and what its presence — and absence — can mean for characters and their relationships. Our main character, Tru, is surprisingly in touch with her emotions due to a project she's been working on in school, which asserts that perhaps time stopped because people stopped caring for each other. Her emotional maturity is extremely refreshing for a YA novel but causes her own personal arc of fixing her family and coming to terms with her abusive sister to have less of an impact at times. Tru is the most level-headed of her family, but I dislike that she becomes the center of fixing her family. As a child of a broken home myself, I had to learn that fixing my family wasn't my responsibility, so it kind of felt like a "fix-it fantasy" for me.

Another issue I disliked within the book was that we never met "the villain" of the story. An extremely psychotic and abusive sister was, to me, blown into huge proportions. And while I completely agree that in real life, some people cannot be helped, it felt odd and almost scapegoating to blame all this family's problems on one child. It also gave the other characters in the book — the mother, the father and the brother — to be allowed to have more shallow personalities.

The premise of this book — that it is okay to forget time and reorient yourself, that time doesn't have to rule your life, that time doesn't dictate how fast or slow you should heal from trauma — was a beautiful message for a YA novel. Rarely do we see YA novel protagonists sit back and grapple with what it means to exist in a moment. Tru's introspection was a brilliant part of this book that added much of its depth.

But one thing King has mastered in this book is its almost-verse dreamlike prose, similar to how thoughts organize and follow one another. As a fan of books written in odd and surprising ways, this aspect of "Switch" was a welcome surprise.

Overall, a beautiful and odd book that I know I'll think about in the months to come.

**Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House/Dutton Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review of this title. This in no way changed my rating**

**Please be aware there are some spoilers due to some content that may be emotionally expensive for some readers to handle**

This was easily one of my most anticipated reads of the year. I started reading A.S. King's books about 2 years ago and have been slowly working my way through her body of work since then. While King is known for her work in the genre of Magical Realism, I think this one will be a standout in that it's very strange and I think will be harder for the average reader to grasp the message.

In Switch, the main character, Truda "Tru" Becker, lives in a society where time has stopped. It has been the same day for approximately 9 months and high school students have been tasked with "finding the solution" to lack of time (or excess of it, depending on how you look at it). This situation will feel very familiar to people reading it when it is published as this lack/excess of time is similar to how many of us have felt during the COVID pandemic and subsequent shutdowns. However, there are (too) many extra plot points worked into the narrative. Throughout the book, we have plot lines including:

-a shifting house full of plywood boxes created by Tru's dad
-a never present on the page sibling who is a narcissistic liar. It is implied she sexually assaulted Tru as a child, as well
-a broken relationship between Tru's parents
-another sibling who is convinced he has done something illegal and continues to harbor those feelings due to the vindictive lies of the narcissistic sibling from before
-Tru joining the track team and being amazing at javelin
-Plutchik's wheel of emotions and how psychology will save time if people start to care about one another
-Certain children developing anomalous abilities during the shutdown, such as the ability to fly

These are SEVEN additional plot lines and some of them are not solved very satisfactorily. Personally, I feel the track and field/children with anomalous abilities could have been scrapped. I feel like they were included to help the reader come to the conclusion that time is a meaningless concept and that they should do what they love instead of bowing to time. However, I think the plot points here become muddied and make it harder to understand the metaphor of the house rotating and the grief/working through Plutchik's wheel that the family has to go through to grow and move on.

I'm also unsure if Tru is meant to be an untrustworthy narrator? It feels simultaneously like she is and also like she's honest to a fault. The family members all have secrets that need to be exposed and worked through throughout the narrative, while Tru does not. So that makes me wonder if that was because she genuinely doesn't have one or because she's unreliable and doesn't share it with us as readers.

The writing is very easy to read. It reads similar to a book of poems and has a lot of what look like stanza lines (line here/ line here/ line here, etc.). This makes it very quick, along with the length of the book being quite short. I'm sure the forward slashes are meant to be stand-ins for the symbol for flow of energy on a power grid, as she discusses energy quite a bit, but it does add to the readability of the title.

All in all, while I think there are going to be people who are fans of this book, this wasn't my favorite of King's titles. The addition of too many plot points made it hard for it to topple favorites like Still Life with Tornado and Dig. However, I think this is a passable book about time as a construct which will resonate with those of us who have lived through this time period and will help explain that feeling to later readers who didn't.

3.5 stars/5 (rounded to 4 for Goodreads)

Oh my gosh this book is so unique! I cannot even begin to explain this book, but I will tell you that I really enjoyed it. Tru is 16, she is our MC and narrator. Her home life is super screwed up, her school life is monotonous and unchallenging, she has few friends. Oh, and on top of the typical teen angst bullshit, time has stopped. For real, time stopped on June 23, 2020. Clocks inexplicably won’t run. Not even a stop watch or an egg timer. Time has stopped! So what do humans do? Reinvent time. Sell you the new time. Make billions from the new time. It’s the American way!

Meanwhile the world is trying to explain why time stopped and what to do about it. They have the kids in high school dedicating whole semesters of school to projects theorizing about time. Tru just wants to support others, and survive the pitfalls of Highschool unscathed and while she’s at it she wants to heal her family. She wants the time stoppage to be a signal to all of humanity to stop, heal and be kinder to one another. She discovers new abilities she didn’t have before time stopped. Others start to notice her for the first time. She pushes and pulls and fights to have her life make sense and to help her family put things to rights. She has so much grit and determination, she got right to my heart strings. Her dad also really got to me, they are wonderful characters.

This book is written in a very unconventional style. It’s not really prose, it’s like couplets and stream of consciousness. It’s filled with forward slashes /// in place of punctuation and sometimes the slashes create whole thoughts. The name of the book is switch and it talks about all the meanings of that word, but the simplest is that electrical diagrams display a switch as a slash /// and it helps to direct the current, to direct the words and the thoughts through the book. Always going forward. It wasn’t hard to read, I thought it was very interesting and it added a lot to the distinctive quirkiness of this book.

What would you do if you could throw away time as it exists? Invent a new time? Had time to fix things that always get pushed off because we simply have too much to do and not enough time to do it. There are some very profound thoughts in this book and it’s worth a read to gain a totally unexamined perspective.

Stunningly original as we can expect from A. S. King. Time stops and no one knows why, particularly not the family of Truda Becker who suddenly discovers a particular prowess in javelin throwing. After her mother left them, her father has turned the house into boxes; one for each of them, Truda, brother RIchard, absent sister and himself. At school Tru is working on a group project around psychology being the solution to the time stoppage, and hers is one where she examinees the eight emotions in an attempt to encourage more empathy. Digging into motivation and how the passage of time influences us as we compete, King layers her meaning in a combination of plot and character that illuminate for readers our present life where time is a construct Another knockout.

I have always loved A.S. King, especially the earlier novels, with just a touch of magical realism. While I found Switch to be quite the achievement, and I enjoyed it very much, I don't think I will be purchasing it for my YA collection.
I have a small YA area and budget and I think this would be a hard sell to my teens.

I received an e-ARC from NetGalley and @penguinteen for an honest review. *
I must say the premise for this book was intriguing. A world where time has stopped on June 23, 2020 sounded interesting. This book was not interesting to me. The format is strange and reads like someone’s erratic train of thought.

The book follows teenager Truda Becker as she navigates her family and her newfound javelin throwing prowess. After her mom left, her dad quit his job and started building boxes inside their house to protect a mysterious switch that nobody can touch. But when her dad goes to sleep, Truda starts taking apart the boxes. Her new mission is to find out what happens when she flips that switch.

Spoilers Ahead:
I have so many questions after reading this. Time has stopped but people can still die or be born, yet if you’re in prison your sentence doesn’t progress. There is a mysterious sister that is mentioned a lot but never makes an appearance. Also you could make a drinking game out of how many times the word “Paleolithic” is used. The format keeps you distanced from the characters and makes it hard to connect with them. Just so many things left unanswered.

Overall this wasn’t the book for me but others seem to have enjoyed it.