This book is unlike anything I've ever read. Is it a poem? A stream of consciousness? A YA novel? It's all of the above, all at once. Switch is not something that makes sense right off the bat, so jump in with the understanding that you'll need to give it about 50 pages to sync up with the flow of the storytelling style. But don't worry - those pages will fly by. The writing style uses brief sentences / unconventional punctuation / grabs the reader / heals the writer. (That's an example of how certain passages are written, if that wasn't implied clearly enough.) The whole novel isn't like that, and after the initial chapters, the seemingly sporadic train of thought backs off a little and the story begins to emerge more clearly. It's a perfect book for our time, written to help the author navigate a personal tragedy that somehow aligned with the world's need to step back as well. I highly recommend reading the author's Bookpage interview after finishing, as it helped me settle some lingering questions about her thematic intentions.

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.