Review: Ask the Passengers

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

Publisher: Little Brown
Publication Date: October 23rd 2012
Pages: 296
Source: Library
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, LGBTQ
Goodreads 

Astrid 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 an extremely honest, beautiful story about identity and following your heart. I don't read much in the LGBTQ category, but those I do read I often love. Ask the passengers is about a girl named Astrid who thinks she might gay, but she's not sure. The book tells her story of coming out to her friends, her family, and herself and the extreme ride it took to get there.

I loved the voice in this story. Astrid sounded like a real girl with real troubles, and she showed amazing development through the course of the book. She was the kind of girl I really just wanted to hug. She had so much going on that most of the time she had no idea what she was doing or who she was. Almost all of the characters were portrayed the way I felt they should have been. Some, including Astrid's mother and sister, were really hard to like, but that's how they were supposed to be. The only character I really would have changed was Dee. Dee is Astrid's girlfriend, and I really, really did not like her for more than half of the book, and she was still only okay by the ending.

The story was simple but full of emotion. At no point was I bored with the story I upset with what was going on. The only part of the story that I really didn't catch at the beginning is what's going on with her two best friends, and if you read the story you'll understand what I mean. I almost feel like I missed something at the beginning, and it took me a while.

Overall I really liked this story. Though it's not the most unique story, I really loved it none the less. I was hooked the whole time I read it, and it ended just the way I thought it should. I highly recommend this book.