Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I really don't know what I just read. I've read a couple of speculative fiction novels before but this? It's too speculative for me. From 20% I wanted to dnf but continued against my better judgement because ...well, just in case. I literally at every stopping point of the book still had no clue what the book was ACTUALLY about? And at the end? What the hell was that book about? I'm just not "clever" enough to read this properly!

Switch is great if you enjoy abstract and slightly strange stories with complex plots. If you don't enjoy that type of thing then I wouldn't recommend you read this. As it's a very niche book, but one if you like that kind of thing will definitely really enjoy.

What a quirky, peculiar story in the best kind of way. It took me a while to get my bearings in the story, but I knew that I was hooked nevertheless. This was my first A.S. King and if it's anything to go by, then I'm looking forward to reading more from the author.

e-Arc provided by Text Publishing via NetGalley in exchange for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

DNF'd at 8%

I received an Arc of this, however, after seeing reviews from people I trust I was hesitant to read this book. I managed to read 8% before putting it down, I could tell you anything significant about this book apart from that it takes place after time has stopped moving.

I have read another book that dealt with a similar occurrence, and found it much less confusing. I know if I continued I wouldn't give this book a high rating so I am putting it down. I will still pick up more from this author in future.

Interesting and equally as strange book which kept me interested mostly to find out what was actually going on. This is my first book from this author that I have read but i am tempted to pick up another book by her to see if she has the potential to be a favourite. would recommend, though im not sure it would be the best first read from the author.

This was my first A.S King and where I would definitely pick up another book from them, this wasn’t my favourite, it wasn’t bad it was just middle for me!!

Switch is a novel directed at teen and young adult readers by acclaimed American author A.S. King.
On one level, Switch is an intriguing exploration of family dysfunction and what it means to be ‘normal’: overshadowed by the absence of her mother and the legacy of her psychotic sister’s abuse, Tru’s family lives in a house whose insides have been entirely covered in plywood by their safety-obsessed father. The father, an electrician, looks at the world as an assemblage of circuits and switches, of energy that must be contained in order for his family to be safe. The way he does this is to box them all in in layers upon layers of plywood to keep them away from the electrics in the walls, including the eponymous Switch, of which not even the father knows what it will do if flicked. As a result, Tru has to constantly counteract her father’s safety measures if she and her brother Richard don’t want to be completely shut in.

Exacerbating the father’s anxiety is the long shadow cast by Tru and Richard’s now-absent sister, whose cruelties were not only directed at family members directly but also consisted in playing one out against another, and whose sneakily planted ‘bombs’ the family keep setting off unexpectedly. The most urgent problem, however, appears to be the absence of the mother, an amateur psychic, whose unexplained departure nine months previously caused the father to quit his job — and, it appears, stopped time.
This is where, unfortunately, the story is undermined by being squeezed into an inherently flawed conceptual framework, in which time is said to have stopped (or been stopped by someone), but everything nonetheless stays the same: ‘Our hair grows / babies are born / people die. But time has stopped.’ An artificial ‘Solution Time’ is invented, measured by a mechanism called ‘N3WCLOCK’, which tells people what time and date it would be if time hadn’t stopped. What remains unclear throughout, however, is in what ways exactly Solution Time is meant to differ from 'real time’, seeing as how nothing has otherwise changed. This unclear state of affairs inevitably leads to internal contradictions, as when Tru, the narrator, muses that she wants ‘time to start moving again so we don’t always have to spend our free time thinking about solutions’.

The youngest in her family, Tru is a high school student who spends most of her not-really-time hanging out with her group of friends in the ‘Psych Team’ trying to find a real solution for the alleged time problem. (For some also unexplained reason, this task has been allocated to high schoolers.) Again, the interactions between the Psych Team’s members, and the evolving dynamics of their relationships, are well-observed and well-written, but, like the father’s box constructions, are overlayered by the ever-increasing implausibility of the ‘time problem’, which is expressed in an overabundance of disconnected themes and mixed metaphors that read more like notes for a story than an actual story.

Hailed by some critics as a surrealist masterpiece, I confess that, to me, Switch reads like a not entirely successful attempt at experimental writing by an otherwise very skilled author with more ideas than would fit into one short novel. B3RTRAND RUSS3LL / is lit on fire / with Palaeolithic / energy / to think outside the box / give a shit / don’t give a shit / you can’t make things make sense just by repeating them. This explanation will do.

This book was definitely not for me. It was too surrealist and abstract. I totally respect the writer and the audience of this book, I'm afraid not for me.
Despite this, I appreciate the good writing and the writer's intention.

I was surprised by how easily I understood what was written and in general how easy it was to be swept away by the writing in this book. I'm not normally one to like "experimental" writing like this. I prefer an author who writes like a real person does, rather than a poetic interpretation.

That having been said, A.S. KING does a great job in making her writing incredibly accessible. The narrative flows like poetry on the pages, but it remains understandable.

Tru Beck is a teenager in a world where time has stopped. This happened a few days after her mother left her father and her father lost her job. She's been trying to deal with this new reality for over nine months, and everyone around her has slowly settled in to the fact that there is no such thing as time anymore.

There's a switch in her house but she doesn't know what it does, because her father has constructed boxes around it to protect the switch. Not only that, the layout of her house shifts around at the whims of her father as well.

There's quite a lot going on in this short novel. A lot of topics are addressed, but the message always remains clear. The parallel that teenagers kind of have to deal with a similar situation today (in COVID times) makes the overall meaning of this book even stronger.

I would certainly recommend this novel even if you're not a fan of magical realism or poetical writing, I think you might still enjoy it.

I have long been intrigued by the surrealism and 'weirdness' of King's writing, and reading Switch as my first experience of their work has thrown me right in!

I loved the way the writing slipped in and out of poetic formatting - the writing is disjointed and staccato, with sections written purely in verse that flow back into the narrative. I was happy to just go along for the ride when it came to the story, often not fully understanding what was happening, but allowing myself to be taken along with it.

I like that it isn't a book that clearly spells out what you're supposed to be getting from it - there is room for everyone to find their own meaning within the various characters and the situation the world is facing within the novel.

I did, however, feel this story lacked in connection to the characters - they were difficult to get to know amongst all the strangeness and trying to figure out what was real and what wasn't. Tru was an interesting protagonist, and I think lots of teens will be able to relate to the pressures she faces at school and at home, and I found the observation of her parents' struggling relationship to be really interesting and profound (if again, a little weird and confusing at times).

I wish we had heard from/seen the sister who exerts so much malevolent influence over the family, and I think Richard's storyline was too surface-level for us to know him and his situation as fully as I would have liked. In some ways I almost wish this story was from multiple POVs so that we could see what was happening to and around Tru with the internal voice of the rest of the cast.

This book also took me much longer to read than a 240 page book normally should, and it did seem to drag in places despite it being so short.

Overall, I'm intrigued to go through some of King's backlist to explore more of their writing, and will be on the look-out for more of their work in the future! It's refreshing to see young adult fiction that embraces a more surrealist, experimental approach that is seen in a lot of adult fiction, but for a younger audience.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Did know it was surrealism before a few chapters in. Being new to surrealism I don't even know where to start this review...

The book was well written, but it had a different way of writing than I'm used to. for some sentences (most of them) there were word options at the end of it. Like "I write phrases on the whiteboard/habit/healing." Not sure if that is formated differently in the final version but I really like it. it was strange and weird but it added more to the story than I initially thought it would.

So the magic and the science crash in here. The magic isn't magic but surrealism. People question why some stuff is happening but it only seems to happen to one family, namely the MC's. All the science about this magic is so off and it was very annoying in the beginning but then I told myself to just accept it and keep going. It's surrealism, it's not meant to be correct. Still annoying.

Weird but enjoyable.

E-arc received from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A S King was an anticipated read for me as I’d heard a lot of great things on Booktube about this author but I just really couldn’t get into this book I’m afraid.

This was far too surreal for me, with little plot, and I couldn’t work out why it mattered that the character was great at javelin or to be honest even what was really going on in the book! It sounded like a great concept but I couldn’t connect with the story and also the formatting of it is quite peculiar with all of the forward slashes etc. From reading other reviews I understand that these are meant to be linked to decisions? However I just found the way the text was laid out like this very distracting and it completely pulled me out of the story.

I’m sorry I couldn’t give this a better review as it was an anticipated read for me, but I just didn’t understand the book!

thank you to netgalley and text publishing for an e-arc of this book. this does not affect my rating or enjoyment of this book.

"When there is no time, life is a treasure hunt."

this book will have a very specific audience: people who really enjoy surrealism (and a lot of it) and who know who the philosophers and psychologists are. unfortunately, i am not the audience for this book.

it was way too abstract for me and 98% of the time i had absolutely no idea what was going on. the story follows truda 'tru' becker, she lives during a time when all time has stopped so the adults have put massive pressure on teenagers to solve the problem for them; but in the mean time they calculate what the time would be by N3WCLOCK.com. in her house is this mysterious switch that her father continually builds boxes around to protect her and others from flipping the switch and seeing what it is, in my opinion the book was not worth the payoff for the explanation we got.

"To understand everything is to understand energy."

i appreciate what this book was trying to do: showing how much pressure time puts on us, specifically teenagers but the whole stopping of time aspect was a bit confusing as the sun still rose and set like a normal day...except all clocks just stopped working.

i also felt absolutely no attachment to the characters at all, tru felt very robotic, but it surprisingly works super well for this book as her project for Solution Time (where teens are solving the problem) is based off of forced emotions and each hour of her clock was to connect with our emotions as she believes time stopped as humans didn't care for each other. (this was based off of a theory by some guy named plutchik. you can read more about it here: https://n3wclock.com/ )

"I have had my AFT3RMATH / I have had my EV3NT / My OR1G1N is coming / be reborn without residue / become who I was meant to be."

the book was also written in a very odd format, it seems like the author tried to write in verse as it all felt very choppy with slashes (/) between a lot of words. but i really don't know if that was the authors intention.

i would also like to mention tru's EV3NT, she could randomly throw a javelin really far for no reason at all and it was never really explained, so i'm confused there? perhaps i missed something?

finally, this book also felt very 'half-baked' it felt more of a first draft which had so much potential for me to love it but sadly it just missed the mark.

overall, a very confusing book which i am way too dumb to understand but if surrealism is your thing then give it a shot! - 2*

I received this from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

What/did/I/just/read?

I really struggled to understand what was going on. Time just wasn’t a thing, a girl could throw a javelin really far, there was a weird storyline about the sister that just wasn’t very clear and the house they all lived in kept turning upside down?

I usually adore anything by A S Kig, but I found the form this novel took meant that it was quite difficult to follow. I love surrealism and I love it when authors play around with the form, but for me this didn't really work

Today is the 23rd of June, 2020.

It was the same day yesterday, and it will be the same day tomorrow. In fact, it's been the same day for almost a year now. Time has stopped for sixteen year old Tru Becker, who lives quietly inside box seven with her problematic family, an impossible class project and that damned switch.

The Switch that her father has been covering with larger and larger boxes, the switch she is never allowed to touch - and the switch that she is definitely going to get to one way or another.

A strange and thought-provoking contemporary story about human connection and feelings of isolation, especially hard-hitting with recent events. Surreal and somewhat magical, Switch is one of those stories that regardless of your opinion on it, you can't deny the craftmanship and imagination behind each peice of the puzzle that slowly comes together over these pages.

Written in a very unique, although disjointed style that while visually intruiging I found especially difficult to read at times and felt unable to connect with Tru as I just couldn't find a rhythm with her thoughts and words. I usually love surrealism, even absurdism, but at points I found myself just scanning the pages and not really taking in what was happening.

However, if you're looking for something esoteric, otherworldly and just a little bit absurd, this is definitely for you.

Switch by A.S. King is a very different, quite unusual, and unique book that takes some time to get your head around and as a result, I believe requires a bit of a different book review. Who is this book about? This is one of the easier questions; this book is about Truda Becker who is a 16-year-old teenage girl. What is this book about? Well, I would say there are three plots to this story; one, how time has stopped, two, how Truda is great at Javelin, and three how her house is an assortment of boxes due to family conflict.

Let me explain in more detail. The main plot of the book is about how time has stopped for everyone. No one knows why the time has stopped but things mostly carry on as usual and people start to rely on the 'N3WATCH' website which claims to have worked out what the time is. Regardless, this book sees Truda questioning why the time has stopped and how we can make time start again.

The plot then expands further on Truda when she starts Javelin. Truda and everyone around her quickly notices she is a very special talented young girl who can naturally throw the javelin further than any other human being and so can break world records. This then leads to extra attention and media attention which Truda is not a big fan of and allegations of how she may be using performance-enhancing drugs.

The plot then finally expands on Truda's family and how her mother had to leave Tru and her brother with their father and how their father had to build lots of wooden boxes in and around the house to live in. This is all due to conflict with Truda's (older) sister who seems to have pulled the family apart.

It is great watching all the characters throughout the book problem-solve via sport, Psychology classes, and family meetings to eventually see everything return back to normal by the end of the book. It is also interesting to follow Truda around and experience her emotions. This is indeed a book which deals with lots of emotions, loneliness, isolation and so much more which is not only familiar to the characters in the book but also to many people from the COVID-19 lockdowns.

As I said, this is a very weird book which I would say uses an experimental format for the book. At first, it took me a while to get my head around the format and context of the book but as I read more of the book I started understanding more of the plot and more about the characters of the book. This is definitely a type of book you would not have seen before.

Altogether, I rate this book three stars because yes it is a good book however it is quite hard to get your head around this book and some of the ideas and the plot presented in this book, in my opinion, are a bit jumbled up. I do really encourage you all to read this book yourself and see what you think of the plot and formatting. I would like to thank NetGalley and Text Publishing for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in return for an honest review. Thank you, I very much enjoyed reading the book.

For the longest time A.S. King has been the author I have been most anticipated to read from. I have never read a book written by her, until now, but I have every single one on my TBR. I don't know why I chose to read this one first, but I think part of it was that it is her most recent and she has written so many it's intimidating on knowing where to start.

Switch is the story of Tru, a young girl living with her father and brother in a house with a switch. No-one knows what it does, just that it shouldn't be touched. Inside her house, her father keeps building bigger and bigger boxes around this switch to keep it protected, so that their house has become a maze, and Tru lives in box number 7. Outside of this the world is stuck in a fold in time, so that it has been the same day, year, minute since it stopped. Artificial time is now being marked on a website someone created called N3WCLOCK.com.

Weird right? Yes. This much I understood, but the story is so abstract it was hard to make sense of what was going on. It was written in a very strange way that didn't quite feel like a novel, but also didn't feel like poetry - something in between. It made me feel very disconnected from the story, I couldn't gain any insight, or develop any feelings about these characters because everything was so choppy.

I like the idea's she was trying to convey about time, about how everyone is so determined to meet deadlines and feeling so much pressure on time that they forget to live and enjoy themselves, but outside of this, I didn't love it.

I will still work through my A. S. King tbr and hopefully will adore some (if not all) of the others. This one just did not do it for me.

Thank you to A.S. King, the publishers and NetGalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange of an honest review.

I think this book is inventive and compelling. I found the form a little hard to engage with but a fascinating concept.