Audiobook Review: Ask the Passengers by A. S. King

Image: Listening Library

Ask the Passengers by A. S. King. Unabridged downloadable e-audiobook, ~8 hours, 5 minutes. Read by Devon Sorvari. Listening Library, October, 2012. 9780449015124. (Review of e-audiobook borrowed from public library.)

Confession time: This is my first A. S. King book. Gasp! Tut-tut! I am a bad librarian.

Over the years, I have read reviews/ heard about her titles and thought I would eventually get to them. But I work in a middle school and they seemed to be solidly high school. Then, she wrote a middle grade novel, which I dutifully bought and never got around to reading. (cringes) I was scrolling through the new titles that were added to Libby (our e-library app) a week or so ago and found Ask the Passengers.

I fell in love with Astrid immediately. She lives with a dysfunctional family (Ugh! That mother!) in a tiny, intolerant Pennsylvania town. She's a whip-smart high school senior who's wrestling with the great philosophers in her humanities class and she thinks she might be gay. Oh. And she's also keeping a big secret for her two best friends who happen to be the school's "It Couple." When things get to be a bit much, she retreats to a picnic table that she and her dad built, lies down and searches the skies for passing aircraft that she can send her love to. Passenger narratives are interspersed throughout Astrid's first-person narration and add an interesting perspective. 

Astrid is a winning narrator. She's smart and dryly hilarious. She's truly questioning her sexuality. She doesn't deny her attraction to Dee, her cute co-worker, but she's also resistant to labels and, truthfully, terrified of the rumor mill and her family's reaction if she does. New-to-me narrator* Devon Sorvari strikes the right balance of snark and sincerity. (*Oops, turns out, she's not. She read Dorothy Must Die.) 

There's a lot to absorb and ponder here. It's mature stuff with some a lot of profanity. It's typical of high school students and not gratuitous. That said, issues of identity are rendered intelligently and respectfully. Thoughtful high school students should be able to relate to this outstanding novel regardless of where they identify. Ask the Passengers floored me. I'm sorry it took so long to get to. I can't wait to read more of King's work.