I CRAWL THROUGH IT by A.S. King \\ Not what I was hoping for...

Review by Sara

I Crawl Through It
by A.S. King
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (September 22, 2015)
Language: English
Goodreads | Amazon

Four teenagers are on the verge of exploding. The anxieties they face at every turn have nearly pushed them to the point of surrender: senseless high-stakes testing, the lingering damage of past trauma, the buried grief and guilt of tragic loss. They are desperate to cope, but no one is listening.

So they will lie. They will split in two. They will turn inside out. They will even build an invisible helicopter to fly themselves far away...but nothing releases the pressure. Because, as they discover, the only way to truly escape their world is to fly right into it.

The story concept is what pulled me towards this book – surrealistic teens dealing with real life traumas. There is so much praise for this book but I have to say that it was simply not for me. I felt myself wanting to DNF this book many, many times but I pushed through.

This book made absolutely no sense to me. I tried very hard to pay attention to each of the teenagers to try to figure out what each was going through, such as what caused their trauma and why they are dealing the way they are. Alas, I failed. I felt there needed to be some sort of appendix at the end of the book to explain what it all meant. I have yet to figure out why there was an invisible helicopter and why nobody called the police on the flasher in the bushes. In addition, it did not feel like four separate teenagers, it felt like one person with a personality disorder.

Overall, the story was “meh” and I will not understand why people are going crazy over this. I could not connect to any character because I truly did not know what was going on with them. The only emotion I felt was frustration for how detached the parents were from their children. The parents showed no connection to their children at all. The ending left me unsatisfied and even more confused. 

Sara

@saramstuart

wingedreviews.com

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