We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Heya! Hope you like my new blog design felt like it needed revamping because I didn’t really like how I did it last month. Tell me what you think.

Thanks to Simon and Schuster for sending me this to review. I pretty much love all of you over there.

Okay so on with my review…

Synopsis:

Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in this contemporary novel.

They always say that high school is the best time of your life.

Peter, the star basketball player at his school, is worried “they” might actually be right. Meanwhile Eliza can’t wait to escape Seattle—and her reputation—and perfect-on-paper Anita wonders if admission to Princeton is worth the price of abandoning her real dreams. Andy, for his part, doesn’t understand all the fuss about college and career—the future can wait.

Or can it? Because it turns out the future is hurtling through space with the potential to wipe out life on Earth. As these four seniors—along with the rest of the planet—wait to see what damage an asteroid will cause, they must abandon all thoughts of the future and decide how they’re going to spend what remains of the present.

Review:

I don’t know what urged me to ask for a review copy of this one, the cover was beautiful the description was kick-ass but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it was the authors name, Tommy Wallach is quite an awesome name.

First off the characters, they are the stereotypes of high school but Tommy writes them with their own dreams and aspirations. Which adds to the realness that this is in fact not just a clichéd novel about teenagers and high school but something more. You have Peter, a star football player whose got his eye on the ball, as in scholarships until he find out about Ardor hurtling towards him and then he begins to rethink his dreams and hopes. There’s Eliza, a photographer whose been mislabeled a slut after a kiss with Peter and is now shamed, she documents the coming of Ardor. Andy, (who I still picture as Andy Samberg!) Is a slacker almost permanently high or wasted, he can’t seem to see where his life is going, so he starts up a band and plans a party the night before Ardor would hit, called The Party at The End of The World. Then you have Anita, a perfect all-A’s student looking to get into Princeton, but it’s not really what she wants it’s what her parents want, so she moves in with Andy and becomes the lead singer of their band. This is the whole Karass (A network or group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner even when superficial  bonds are not visible.) The characters are real and well portrayed, they each have very unique voices, in the way the speak, their actions and their choices.

The writing does well to show the teenage language, how they deal with each other, what they think from day to day and what actually comes out of their mouth’s. Riddled with humour and sharpened with flecks of poignant sadness, Tommy manages to create a time when everyone cares and at the same time doesn’t. They are scared for the end of the world and all the chances they’ll never get but also how they couldn’t feel more free at the brink of apocalypse. This is something only a truly good writer could capture. It depicts very real problems, the detrimental effect of bullying, coping with a parents illness, coping with parents in general, finding your own two feet, standing up for what’s right and holding on to love.

The story takes place over about 2 months and in between sections of the book there are diagrams showing how close Ardor is to Earth and whatnot. I liked these breaks and I didn’t, first off I could tell how far it was to the end so I could try and see what would happen, and then I didn’t want to see what was happening. At the end I was holding in internal screams but I shall leave out why, but I guess the end had symbolism, it is when we come to the end that we realise everything we’ve done and ask for forgiveness.

My Favourite Quotes:

“And there in the darkness of the hotel room, scarcely more than twenty-four hours before the maybe end of the world, the three of them managed to laugh together. It turned out that no amount of terror could stop the great human need to connect. Or maybe, Anita thought, terror was actually at the heart of that need. After all, every life ended in an apocalypse, in one way or another.”

“The end of the world revealed the futility of all commemorative plaques

I give this book four and half out of five stars, a half star for the liberal use of language. And I urge you to read it. ⭐⭐⭐⭐½/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐