Switched (Trylle, #1)

by Amanda Hocking

[nannah]

Yikes.

Book content warnings:
ableism
classism

First of all, what a prologue! I didn't know who to root fore, especially with the title being what it is. I thought the book would go into more about how changelings affect humans (because they're literally victims). But then what I got on the first page is the love interest introduced by having him "stare" at the MC incessantly during her high school class with his "dark eyes". Give me a break.

And soon after, I got this:

Most likely he was a damn sociopath, and for whatever reason, I found that endearing."
??

This isn't the only awful line because once Wendy meets her actual mother, there's this gem:

". . . in a beautifully elegant borderline-anorexic way."
Lovely. I didn't know an eating disorder was elegant. What makes this worse is that this is a young adult book. Young girls are going to be reading this and seeing anorexia as "elegant" and "beautiful".

I also should have counted how many times the author uses the descriptors "foxy" and "dark eyes" because it seems she ran out of creativity when it came to describing men. The only way it could be worse is if she used the word "orbs".

It's also difficult to relate to Wendy, the MC, because she's so privileged. Her brother drives a Prius (even without having a job), her family came from money, and she's "never been a big fan of manual labor" --> and by that she's talking about working in the veggie garden.

This whole privilege thing was supposed to be justified, too. Eventually, Wendy finds out she's a literal troll, and goes to the "troll village" somewhere in Minnesota. The Queen (of the trolls) says this: "And so we leave our children with the most sophisticated, wealthiest human families. The changelings live a childhood that is the best this world has to offer . . ." Soooo . . . the Best This World Has To Offer is the childhood of the wealthiest? And it doesn't help that all these trolls are coded as white, even though they're supposed to be earth-toned--so it would make so much more sense if they were black, or literally any other race. So these trolls supposedly get the Best this world has to offer by living with privileged, racist families, most likely. Because poorer and poor families have nothing to offer, do they?

Plus this whole Princess thing with emphasis on bloodline and the fact that Wendy is the most important because of her pure bloodline and what she can offer the kingdom through her CHILDREN reeks of misognyny. Is she a princess or a purebred dog? The whole plot seems to revolve around this. What if she had endometriosis or cysts or other reproductive issues? Would she be banished as if she had actually "bred" with a lower Trylle such as a tracker? But then again the author probably didn't even consider someone could have actual illnesses when her book is so ableist as it is (re her "host mother" and all the jokes about insanity so FUNNY).

So yeah, I didn't enjoy this book. I did like Tove, but not much else.