a.s. king you are so weird and i’m always here for it

also it’s been 9 years and i think publishers should give this book another shot. republish this with a different cover!! and don’t try to market it as something it’s not! trying to fit this into genres and descriptions that aren’t fitting means that this book is read by people who don’t actually want to read it, and missed by people who probably do. i crawl through it is a strange, risky, surreal YA novel—truly creative and unique, but in the way where it’s hard to categorize and i honestly can’t think of any suitable comp titles. the cover is so god awful boring and makes it seem like it’s just a regular YA contemporary about well, test anxiety?? sure, that’s mentioned in the synopsis, but that is so, so misleading. a.s. king has such a distinct voice and never shies away from tough topics, so i think it would have been beneficial to lean into the weirdness because most of the negative reviews say this book is too weird. let people know from the beginning that this is not your regular contemporary YA and embrace the fact that it veers off into indistinguishable territory. draw people in with the idea that this book makes you raise an eyebrow.

edited review 2 hours later: oopsies it IS going to be republished this year!! silly me!!!! not sure how i managed to complain about a random 9-year-old out-of-print book the same year it’s going to be reprinted but i am looking forward to what better be a ~thrilling~ new cover, right dutton? ;) riiiight?