Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

I've read this book Ask the Passengers twice now, and I think that it's not quite as good as I thought it was the second time around.

The main character is a girl named Astrid, and she moves to this small town called Unity Valley from the big city of New York. In Unity Valley everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone else's business, at least that's what it seems like. In reality, everyone knows things about other people that that person wants them to know, and no one knows anybody in New York or so it seems. And it's never said outright, but it's paradoxical that nobody knows anyone in New York because they don't know them personally but people in New York I would think aren't as fake as people that live in small towns like Unity Valley. People in the big city don't care about what strangers think of them so they don't hide who they really are, but since people in Unity Valley have "reputations" that they have to live up to, they lie about things that they know they will be judged harshly for.

Kristina and Justin, Astrid's two best friends, are the perfect couple to the town of Unity Valley. They are perfect for each other and they go on double dates every Friday. It's as if it's something out of a 1950's movie. Except that it's not.

Kristina and Justin are both gay and the double dates they're going on aren't really what they appear to be. Kristina is actually dating this girl named Donna, and Justin is dating a guy named Chad. Now that would seem like a huge secret and it is throughout a large portion of the book, but there's an even bigger secret that Kristina and Justin don't know and that's that Astrid is dating a girl, named Dee. But for her this doesn't mean that she's gay because she doesn't really know if she just fell in love with a girl or if she is only attracted to girls. So she doesn't tell anyone, the only people who know about her girlfriend are herself and Dee.

In the city near Unity Valley is a gay bar called Atlantis. Kristina and Donna and Justin and Chad go there all the time and Kristina tries to get Astrid to go with them. Not because she thinks Astrid might be gay, but just because she wants Astrid to go out. They are underage, but the people there never card them. Astrid eventually gives in and goes with them to Atlantis, but they use this guy, Jeff, who really likes Astrid, as a cover. They tell Astrid's mother that Jeff is taking her out to a midnight movie so that she can stay out later than she would be able to otherwise. But what Kristina, Justin and Astrid really do is go out to dinner with Jeff as a double date and then go to Atlantis afterwards without him.

The first few times Astrid goes with them to Atlantis are pretty fun, but Kristina gets skeptical about whether Astrid really is straight or not. Kristina eventually pries the truth out of her and tells her to bring her girlfriend to Atlantis with them, and she does. They go to Atlantis twice and the second time they go it get's busted by the police, and they end up having to call their parents to come pick them up or they couldn't leave. 

So Astrid calls her father to come pick her up, and when they get home at around four in the morning, Astrid's mother is waiting for her. She wakes up her sister Ellis for this "big news" that she thinks Astrid is going to tell them. And her mother always likes to think that she is more open-minded than the people of Unity Valley, and she always talks about how she had a lot of gay friends in New York, but living in a small town with small-minded people has changed the way she thinks. She tries to say that she's mad at Astrid for going to a bar when she's underage, but it's obvious to everyone except her that she's mad at Astrid for going to a gay bar.

Anyway, Astrid doesn't tell that she's gay, she tells her that she only went to the bar to dance and hang out with her friends. Surprisingly, her parents bought that, but she slowly changes her answer until she eventually says that she is gay, until further notice. She's studying Socrates in school and her class talks about how he questioned everything, and he didn't like the labels that everyone has for everything, and Astrid tries to get away from the labels too, but she realizes that people need labels to differentiate between each other, so she says that she's a lesbian for the time being. 

Now the things I noticed this time that kind of bother me are that Astrid will say on one page that she misses the time before she started going to Atlantis when she told the truth all the time and wasn't sneaking around, but then two pages later she would complain about she's such a terrible liar. But really she's been sneaking around and lying the whole time. She's been hiding Dee from everyone and she's been sneaking around with her. And she's been helping Kristina and Justin lie about their "perfect" relationship. I just hated the back and forth and her complaining that she can't lie, and her complaining that she doesn't want to lie anymore. She's just all over the place and it drives me nuts. 

So Donna is in college and her sorority house is LGBTQ friendly. And one night Donna brings Kristina and Astrid to a party at her sorority house, and this part that I'm not too happy about is that Astrid cheats on Dee with a complete stranger named Kim. She only makes out with her, but still it bothers me. I get that she's trying to explore her sexuality and figure out if shes attracted to girls or just Dee, but I really don't think that's the way to go about it. Something in the book that she thinks is ignorant is that people think that with gay people, relationships are only physical, and if she wants to prove her case then going around and cheating on Dee with a stranger is definitely not helping her case. And the worst part is, nothing even comes from it. She doesn't tell Dee, and Kristina catches her and sees her making out with another girl, when she knows that she's dating Dee and she doesn't say anything to her about it. Hell, it doesn't even seem like Astrid feels guilty at all, and that pisses me off. Why doesn't she care that she was sneaking around and lying to Dee?? Why does that seem like such a non-issue compared to lying about going on a date?

Now don't get me wrong, the book was pretty good, and it shone a light on LGBTQ people which is admirable, but it also shines a light that says cheating and not saying anything about it is okay. And it didn't seem so much to me that Astrid's character developed much throughout the book, she was just all over the place. It was only at the end where she truly wasn't telling anymore lies, that is if you don't count the fact that she never told Dee.

Rumble by Ellen Hopkins

Like other books I've reviewed by Ellen Hopkins, Rumble proves to be a suspenseful and brilliantly written book. I really enjoyed this one because unlike most of her others books that I've read, the main character in this one is a male by the name of Matt. Where it starts off, Matt is the only son of a father who only finds pleasure in the local high school's basketball team of which he is the coach, and a distant and cold mother who prefers to spend her free time drinking rather than spending time with her family. Not that Wyatt, Matt's father doesn't get his fill of late nights spent drinking, whenever his team wins a basketball game or even when they don't he'll spend hours after the game at bars with some buddies.

Matt gets concerned adults cornering him from every angle over an essay he wrote dismissing the existence of God. In that essay he also talks about his brother Luke who recently committed suicide. He was pushed into committing suicide because he was bullied and abused by his fellow classmates, specifically Christians who Matt describes as "troglodytes" who tortured his brother because he was gay. People at his school anonymously posted gay porn photoshopped with Luke's face in it, on his social media and on the basketball team's Facebook page. That was also how his father found out about the whole thing, and this revealed to Luke and Matt just how homophobic and intolerant their father really is. 

But through all of his struggles with convincing the adults in his life that the essay he wrote was in fact harmless, his parents neglect and his little brother's suicide, he has an amazing, thoughtful and understanding Christian girlfriend, Hayden. Or so he thinks. After Luke's death, Hayden becomes more and more distant. They argue more often and Matt finds himself seeking comfort in the arms of Alexa, Hayden's ex-best friend.

Now I don't want to give away too much more, but even if I did, I'm not sure I explain the book justice. It is a very thought-provoking and emotional book, i know when I read it I got extremely emotionally invested, it broke my heart and it made me smile; it made me cry and it made me laugh, it was all over the place, but it wasn't too all over the place. Some books are and the succession of events makes it hard to follow but in this book despite the large number of things happening in a very short period of time, it wasn't hard to follow along.

I loved this book and strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.