Review: I Crawl Through It by A.S. King

Title: I Crawl Through It 
Author: A.S. King
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release date: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 2/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

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 genius of acclaimed author A.S. King reaches new heights in this groundbreaking work of surrealist fiction; it will mesmerize readers with its deeply affecting exploration of how we crawl through traumatic experience-and find the way out. 

I really try to like this book because it´s written by A.S. King author of Everybody See the Ants and although it´s a weird book, I did enjoyed it, but I came pretty close to not finish reading I Crawl Through It, but I decided not to give up and read it to the end, but it just did not liked it.

First of all it´s a very strange, surreal book with unreliable characters (in other books I´ve enjoyed this type of character) and quite frustrating. This was definitely not a book for me, but maybe other people will like it.

The lives of four teenagers who cope day to day in different ways (and some of them have PTSD) is intertwined in the story of Stanzi who feels she´s divided in two, likes to dissect frogs, and wears a lab coat at all times, with constantly absent parents and she´s hopelessly in love with her friend Gustav. Gustav spends his free time building a red helicopter which is invisible, no one can see it except Stanzi (but she can only see it on Tuesdays). China is a girl that due to something that happened long ago has swallowed herself and loves to write poems. And Lansdale is a compulsive liar and that due to this fact her hair grows every time she tells a lie (like Pinocchio).

I started reading Crawl Through It with great expectations but it may be that surrealistic novels are not for me or at least this one failed to capture my attention, it´s extremely weird and bizarre. This book wasn't for me, but I will try to read other A.S. King´s books.