We All Looked Up

The best books, they don't talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you'd always thought about, but that you didn't think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you're a little bit less alone in the world.

I didn't realise I was expecting this book to not be very good until it surprised me. And it surprised me a lot.

The cover is lovely and I think that might have something to do with why I was so drawn to this book, despite the description that seemed to be indirectly promising the equivalent of a bad high school drama meets cheesy action movie, complete with possible Armageddon-style asteroid collision. It does have a lot of high school politics, and it is about the coming apocalypse... and yet this book is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Firstly, the characters are fantastic. Wallach takes the traditional high school cliques and stereotypes and breathes humanity into them. In the author's hands, the jock, the slut, the slacker and the aloof nerd become three-dimensional human beings, each with aspirations, desires and insecurities of their own. As the opening quote suggests, the strength of these characters is that it's easy to find little bits of ourselves in all of them - or so I believe.

All the world was a cage.

I think there's something to be said about an author who can take some of the oldest, cliche ideas and create something new out of them. This book dabbles constantly in philosophical thinking and asks us to consider the meaning of things (or lack of), religion, living for today, and the importance of pursuing what you love. It could have been so preachy, so cheesy, so contrived and yet it contains such a subtle and powerful honesty and rawness to it that these concepts are never overdone or forced down our throats.

This book feels like more of an exploration and character study than the relaying of a message. I liked how the characters were complex, sometimes unlikable and often misunderstood in each other's eyes. We get to experience the coming "end of the world" through the eyes of both the religious and the non-believers, through the eyes of a virgin, and through the eyes of someone who sleeps around (and is proud of it), those with loving parents and those without. I guess the ultimate message - if one could be said to exist - is of existentialism and creating your own meaning, and it works well.

I also thought the writing was beautiful and captured all the pain, want and uncertainty of being a teenager:

And as Anita watched Andy skip across the room, she finally felt it, rumbling like a bone-deep hunger she’d been ignoring for weeks. A sensation somehow totally new and totally familiar at once. It was the glistening green blossom of jealousy, and deeper down, beyond the place where the stem met the dirt, the parched and greedy roots: love.

Most of all, I love the fluidity of the novel as it moved from one perspective to the next. I'm not a big fan of multiple POVs and especially not more than two, but somehow the four here work really well together. Most books with multiple POVs seem to stop and start as we jump from one person's story to the next, but this feels like one continuous tale with all of these very different people's lives bleeding into one another. They all entwine perfectly.

"The best books, they don't talk about things you never thought about before. They talk about things you'd always thought about, but that you didn't think anyone else had thought about. You read them, and suddenly you're a little bit less alone in the world. You're part of this cosmic community of people who've thought about this thing, whatever it happens to be....."

ARC received from: Netgalley
Rating: 4*

Cover: Yay
POV: 3rd Person but told from multiple POV
Review: I don't read that many Young Adult novels and the ones I do tend to be Dystopian-related. However, don't be fooled by the summary, whilst it talks of an asteroid heading straight to earth and possible mass-destruction, this book is anything but a Dystopian-world. It's about our world, or rather the familiar world of American teenagers, and how possible impending death causes four of them to break out of their social circles and form new bonds with people they normally wouldn't give a second glance to.

You're probably thinking that exploring the world of messed up teenagers mixing it up with their playground enemies is nothing new but Tommy Wallach brings something special to the genre: the ability to write. He gets his characters to say some pretty prosaic, insightful things whilst still sounding like teenagers and he very quickly draws you into the world of these four characters and gets you to care about them.

The open-ended ending was something of beauty as well. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I really hope this book makes it on the 2015 Goodreads award for Best Young Adult fiction as I will definitely be voting for it. Can't wait to see what the author writes next.

We All Looked Up follows the final weeks of four teenagers who are brought together by the reality that world might be ending, as a result of an asteroid called Ardor, which has found itself on a collision course for earth.
Four unlikely teenagers find themselves growing closer to one another as the events of the impending apocalypse unfold. There's Peter, a well-meaning athlete, Andy a stoner with an unstable homelife, Anita, an honour-roll student with aspirations of being a musician, and finally Eliza, a budding photographer who sleeps around to get over the pain of her father's cancer and her absentee mother. United by music, love, loneliness, and the desire to be something other than what they are, the teenagers set about planning the Party at the End of the World.
With distinct characterisation, snappy dialogue and relatable struggles, We All Looked Up, examines the idea of destiny and desire, and what really matters when everything around you is crumbling and you only have each other. It's fast-paced, witty and exciting as it races towards the inevitability of fate, keeping the reader guessing until the very last moment.

Publication Date: March 26th 2015 from Simon and Schuster Childrens

Source: Netgalley

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

I loved this story - I'm a big fan of the post apocalyptic as long as there is heart to the drama, here we are "Pre possible apocalypse but no-one really knows" - its a genre all on its own. I'm sure that someone more creative than I can come up with a better word for it.

Anyway, here we have a fairly typical bunch of High School kids about to head out into the world, and as we meet them they all have plans even if some are a little disjointed. In perhaps one of the best opening scenes I have seen in a book for a while we meet them, one by one, "handing the baton" style - they are living life involved in various things, some at home, some out and about but all under the same sky, and at different moments watching the same shooting star. As a hook into the characters and story it was done with elegant perfection...by the end of the first little bit you have a feel for all of them. When that same shooting star they were all half wishing upon turns into something more sinister, everything changes.

It is a clever story and an emotional one in a lot of ways - how do you plan for a future that may not even exist. Do you wait and see? Carry on regardless? An interesting question to ask anyway for those of us who like to ponder these things - what Tommy Wallach has done is give that notion a voice and a reality all of its own. How our main four react, to themselves, to each other, to the imminent disaster is beautifully drawn and really terribly addictive.

The tale has a musical heart - the fact that the author is also a musician shines through, there is a lyrical quality to the storytelling, a lilt and a flow to it that keeps you involved. As the world goes mad around them, each must decide what is important, there is "before " and there is "after" and both are explored within the thoughts and actions of the kids trying to make sense of it all. I found it absolutely fascinating, a tale of human resolve and action seen through the eyes of a group who still have a lot of growing up to do should they be given the chance.

Overall a really really good read - the ending was pitch perfect, the novel overall has a simple beauty to it and I can't wait to see what this author brings us next. In a genius turn he has created the music found within the novel - there is an album I shall be buying for sure.

Highly Recommended.

Happy Reading Folks!

From the moment I heard about We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach, I new I had to read it. And just like I hoped, it's amazing!

It starts off just looking like a blue star in the sky - but soon it is announced that star is actually an asteroid, named Ardor, and there's a 66.6% chance it's going to collide with Earth, and wipe out the human race. Four ordinary high school seniors' lives are turned upside down by the news; Peter, an athlete, Eliza, a budding photographer outcast for being promiscuous, Andy, a skater who spends his time getting high, and Anita, a high achiever who's parents always expect more, find themselves thrown together in the events leading up to Ardor's impact, have their worldview changed, and discover what it really means to be alive.

This book! Oh my god, this book! We All Looked Up is such a genius idea, the premise is fantastic and is so, so promising, but Wallach takes the story so much further than I expected! It's so thought-provoking, and leads you through all these little epiphanies about how you live your life, and what you should be doing with it. I am so excited by this story, and think it's going to be such a hit!

I'm not going to go into too much detail about the plot and events of this book, because I feel it's the kind of story where you should discover everything as you read it. I was most interested in Eliza and Andy's narrations. That's not to say that Peter and Anita's narrations weren't interesting, they were. In fact one of the brilliant things about We All Looked Up is how well Wallach wrote the voices of these four very different teens and kept them so distinct and individual. I loved them all! I just found their stories to be more emotional in the case of Eliza and just so different to anything I have experienced in the case of Andy. I think Andy was probably my favourite of all the characters; he was flawed and he got up to some really questionable and unwise things, partly due to his relationship with his best mate Bobo who is such a loose cannon, but he's also pretty funny, and I found some of his emotional moments really endearing. He makes some bad choices, but I think if he was helped on to the right path, he would be such a great guy. I really loved him.

I loved how sex was looked at in this book, especially into relation to Eliza and her sleeping around. She is shunned for it, which is really awful, but she's just a girl taking back her power after one kiss seems to ruin her life, in a way that she enjoys. The girl likes having sex, and there's nothing wrong with that, and it's so wonderful to see that juxtaposed with the grief and reputation she gets for it. Andy at one points mentions the "slut shaming" Eliza is on the receiving end of, and I know that's a common term, but considering everything it says about Eliza and her sex life, I wish the term was addressed; the term is basically saying "shaming a slut", which just isn't great. That word should just not be used, in general, even in a term that's meant to be against it - but that's just my opinion on terminology, not a put down on the book.

Peter was a really great guy. I loved how, even before anyone knew about Ardor, he was starting to rethink his view on life, because of a question asked by a really awesome teacher in class. Is what he plans to do with his life really worthwhile? And once Ardor makes it's presence known, that questions becomes a lot bigger, more important to him. He doesn't want to waste his life, whether there's a collision or not, he wants his life to count for something, wants to do something that matters. Here's this ordinary guy who's pretty nice, pretty smart, and pretty awesome athlete, who then becomes this amazing guy who wants to make a difference, somehow. I admired him so much. Anita is also a wonderful character who finds freedom in the announcement of Ardor's possible imminent collision. Life is short, so why spend it under the rule of parents who continually put too much pressure on you, and completely giving up on your dreams because they disagree with them? This girl has some guts to do what she does when the end of the world is nigh, and I thought she was just so brave. I do wish we also got some of Peter's sister Misery's point of view, who goes out with drug dealer Bobo, because I think her story would have been amazing!

I could go on and on about how completely awe-inspiring this book is, but as I said, I think you should discover it all yourself, but this is definitely going to be one of those books that I'm going to be talking about for a while. The climax at the end is just unbelievable and totally unexpected, and really had me getting emotional. We All Looked Up is just such a fantastic novel, an absolutely stunning debut and you all have to read it!

I want to thank Netgalley and the publishers for the early read of this fantastic book.

I really liked this. I can best describe it as set in pre-apocalyptic times. There's an asteroid heading to Earth and there's a very good chance it's going to hit. I'm not a great reader of books set in out of the ordinary settings but this really worked. The setting for me made me picture the beginning scenes of the popular TV show The Walking Dead (without the zombies) and Revolution (a TV show about a post-apocalyptic world without power), a mix of the two. Basic desolation, looting, arson etc. Crime and disorder gone crazy.

This is the story of 4 characters - high school age - Eliza is described as the photographer cum highschool slut; Andy the druggie; Anita's the swot, the girl who does what her parents want; and, Peter is the school sports star and all round looker. The plot lines map their stories of how they deal with their impending fate.

Peter has a girlfriend but he secretly kissed Eliza, and Andy has a thing for Eliza. Andy has a friend, Bobo, a dislikeable druggie dropout who dates Peter's sister Misery. And Anita wants to sing and Andy is a musician. So slowly their stories become connected. Each chapter has a section devoted to each main character and this works really well, interweaving the stories, and, especially in the later chapters, filling is blanks and answering questions the reader might have.

I believe the target audience is young adult (YA) but I'd recommend it for adults as well. I'm not a great reader of YA but this worked for me because the characterisation and plot were very good, despite the characters having typical high school concerns. There are (mild) references to sex, drugs, and drinking, as well as criminal activity. It wasn't something that concerned me, but if they are subjects you'd prefer to not read about then maybe this book wouldn't work for you.

I wish the author lots of luck with this book, and every success with his future work.

This novel centres on four students who have nothing in common except they go to the same high school. Anita who is studious and very much controlled by her parents, Eliza who has a reputation for sleeping around, Andy a pot head and Peter the jock. They all know about the asteroid Ardor, that will pass close to earth and really think nothing of it until they are told there's a 66.6% chance that it WILL COLLIDE WITH EARTH! Tommy Wallach takes us through each of their stories and how they come together for the END! Fantastic!