We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

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Before the asteroid we let ourselves be defined by labels:

The athlete, the outcast, the slacker, the overachiever.

But then we all looked up and everything changed.

They said it would be here in two months. That gave us two months to leave our labels behind. Two months to become something bigger than what we'd been, something that would last even after the end.

Two months to really live.

In his remarkable debut, Tommy Wallach has delivered an impactful and thoughtful story on how we as humans can simultaneously be significant and not, and when it all comes down to it, it’s over in a blink of an eye. Despite the gloom that hangs over it, this book has plenty of lighthearted and eye-opening moments.

It opens with Peter, a gifted and popular athlete who has begun to question his status. During one of his classes, his teacher poses a question that jars him. It essentially makes him question his own existence and what his experiences have taught him or brought him so far. Sure he has the hot, popular girlfriend, he’s well liked, he’s on his way to a good school, but what does it all really mean? Whatever his teacher brought up in class has stirred something within Peter that launches him on a soul-searching expedition.

Eliza is the girl who was happiest when she was under the radar. Then Peter happened to her the year before and her reputation took a major hit. A friend suggested that she should just use that reputation to her advantage and so she went with it, going from barely seen to being known all over but for all the wrong reasons. She has her own problems – a terminally ill father and a mother who left the family. Her salvation has been photography where capturing images in black and white is a language that she can understand. I have to say, I enjoyed the description of how she related to the pictures and what they meant to her.

Anita has been slowly suffocating under the pressures foisted upon her by her parents. She’s been groomed all her life to have excellent grades so she can enter the top notch schools. There’s no room for anything else including what she loves most – singing and performing. The strict regimen is finally getting to her and she’s slowly drumming up the courage to break from their crushing expectations.

Andy is the kid everyone writes off, including his parents, as he has no interest in school or succeeding. He’d much rather get high and skate all day – the quintessential slacker.  He’s the biggest surprise of all because he’s quite intuitive and somehow comes up with the right thing to say to someone when they need it. Where the others are mostly very serious, Andy brings a certain amount of humor to the story.

Each of these four people fulfills a certain kind of stereotype. By the end of the book, those stereotypes are broken and we see more to them than what we initially saw. All of them notice the asteroid and can sense its importance. Then it’s announced that the asteroid is headed for earth and that only a small percentage of the earth’s population will survive its impact. For those who survive, what’s there to live for? And what does that mean for now? The pending calamity causes each of them to be introspective. This could be their chance to rectify a wrong, reinvent themselves or fight for something they’ve long wanted.

Everyone's emotions run the gamut as chaos and civil unrest follow leading some very irrational events. These four individuals thrown together by circumstances, but who otherwise may not have uttered a word to each other before, must now rely on each other.

We All Looked Up also has an amazing cast of supporting characters too, such as Peter’s rebellious younger sister, Misery, Andy’s volatile friend, Bobo (a bad nightmare waiting to unleash itself), and Eliza’s dad. All of them add so much to the story. But the two supporting people I loved the most were the teacher Mr. MacArthur and the student counselor Suzie O. They have this amazing ability to connect with their students without condescension or hostile admonishment. They just know how to speak to these kids. I would have loved to have had Mr. MacArthur as my teacher!

I’d been seeing We All Looked Up everywhere and had heard so much buzz about it. For me, there was something about the title that spoke of endless possibilities and surprises. And despite the impending end of the world, these friends discovered those possibilities and made the most of their last few weeks. This book gets a solid 5 stars from me and I cannot recommend it enough!

~ Bel

Tommy Wallach is not only an amazing writer but he also happens to be a musician. Check out his moving soundtrack for We All Looked Up.

   

     
   

Winger (Winger #1) by Andrew Smith

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Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

I’ve seen this book around and was both intrigued and grossed out by the cover.  I mean who wants to stare at a bloody nose? But once again, if I’m at the library and it’s in front of me, I go for it. And boy, what a story this turned out to be!

It took me a couple of chapters to get into Winger and once I did, I just had a blast with his fourteen year-old sense of humor and wit. This kid is hilarious and smart! Every time he quipped about what a loser he was, I could honestly hear the disdain and resignation in his voice. He is such a hapless, awkward hero and it’s most glaringly apparent when he’s around his crush, Annie. His inner monologues are ridiculous. When he’s assigned to room with Chas, one of the meathead teammates from his rugby team, even he’s surprised that he hasn’t been beaten to a pulp yet. The two of them form a shaky and unlikely friendship based on poker, beer and taunts.

What makes Winger enjoyable is that Ryan Dean is essentially an "every kid" going through those rough and awkward stages of growing up: puberty, girls, being one of the guys. In his case, the horrors are magnified because he’s in 11^th grade. Being the youngest gives him a slight disadvantage when it comes to his love life, but you’d never realize it seeing how his other friends treat him. Ryan Dean ends up bonding with his fellow teammates, guys he is either been intimidated by or thought would have no interest being friends with him. His confidence grows both on and off the field as does his own awareness of the people and relationships around him. His teammate Joey, who is becoming his best friend, happens to be gay, and many times Ryan Dean acknowledges that Joey’s “gayness” does not affect him. I fully appreciated his introspective observations about the relationships surrounding him, sorting out for himself how he feels about all his friends and all the changes they’re experiencing. As read it, I kept thinking how I hope when my son gets to that age, that he can be as bright and true to himself as Ryan Dean. I also kept thinking, wow, boys are such perverts. Yeah, I realize those two thoughts cancel each other out!

The unexpected and life-shattering event that occurs has a very somber affect throughout the remainder of the book.  I was too blindsided and stunned to even absorb the rest of what was happening. I had a restless night’s sleep after I’d read it and each time I tossed and turned I remember wondering if that really happened. Sure enough, it did. I re-read that brief chapter again, willing so desperately for it to be different. Once I accepted it (unwillingly), I went through the rest of the chapters a couple of times, but I could not escape that feeling of being punched in the gut.

I cannot express enough how much I love this book. Five stars is our highest rating and I wish I could give it an entire cluster. This is my favourite kind of discovery, where you grab a book without suspecting in the least that it will impact you significantly. Winger is a profound journey through the ups and downs of growing up, changing relationships, endless embarrassing moments (oh just wait til you get to the Spongebob bandaid story) and loyalty among friends, making it a strong contender for my Top 10 of 2014.

~ Bel

Sever (The Chemical Garden #3) by Lauren DeStefano

* * * 3/4

With the clock ticking until the virus takes its toll, Rhine is desperate for answers. After enduring Vaughn’s worst, Rhine finds an unlikely ally in his brother, an eccentric inventor named Reed. She takes refuge in his dilapidated house, though the people she left behind refuse to stay in the past. While Gabriel haunts Rhine’s memories, Cecily is determined to be at Rhine’s side, even if Linden’s feelings are still caught between them.

Meanwhile, Rowan’s growing involvement in an underground resistance compels Rhine to reach him before he does something that cannot be undone. But what she discovers along the way has alarming implications for her future—and about the past her parents never had the chance to explain.

In this breathtaking conclusion to Lauren DeStefano’s Chemical Garden trilogy, everything Rhine knows to be true will be irrevocably shattered.

I remember Fever felt like such a head trip I wondered how easily I’d fall back into this dysfunctional and creepy world. I didn’t have a problem at all.  No longer a runaway, Linden, unsurprisingly welcomes Rhine back into the fold even if he’s a bit cold or distant towards her. The guy really is too good to be true. He’s angry at her for leaving, confused by their friendship, yet tries to protect her from his overbearing father. Cecily, her sister-wife is also happy to have Rhine back in their lives. They do make an odd family and it gets even more bizarre once they meet up with Linden’s uncle, Reed. Where Housemaster Vaughn is a manipulative, untrustworthy control freak, Reed expresses more personality and prefers you not get in his way.

I really wasn’t sure how the story was going to develop. I was surprised by what I thought was a lack of urgency on Rhine’s part to get out there and find her brother.  It just felt as if she’d lost some of her spark. May be it’s because she’s recovering from Vaughn’s induced illness, maybe she just genuinely wanted to make peace with Lindley and Cecily, who knows, but something just felt off about her staying in place.  But what really bothered me was how many seemingly unrelated events were connected. It seemed almost too convenient.  

I guess I was expecting complications throughout the book because that’s what I remembered about Fever. Rhine and Gabriel were either on the run, caught and held captive or in hiding. So when things in Sever moved at a less frenzied pace, I just felt antsy and cautiously waited for something to jump out at me from the corner. That didn’t quite happen. That being said, I still enjoyed reading Sever. I think one of the best parts of it is Rhine’s eye-opening discovery of who her parents really were.  That turns her on her head and shifts her beliefs.

The Chemical Garden Trilogy has been such a pleasure to experience. Lauren DeStefano has laid out an incredibly detailed description of a world gone desperate. So desperate that it would gamble with its children’s futures leading to such disastrous consequences.  Sever brings to end a very long and hard-fought year for Rhine.  It’s definitely worth the read.  And if you’re into dystopian novels with a sense of the dramatic, or even enjoyed The Masque Of The Red Death like I very much did, then this entire series is perfect for you!

~ Bel

The Evolution Of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

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Mara Dyer believes life can’t get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.

It can.

She believes there must be more to the accident she can’t remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed.

There is.

She doesn’t believe that after everything she’s been through, she can fall in love.

She’s wrong.

 

As soon as I started reading Evolution I knew I'd have trouble breaking away from it. It didn't take long for the familiar creepy feeling from the first book to sink back in to be completely enthralled in Mara's dysfunctional world.

Mara is facing the consequences of events that she helped manipulate in the previous book. Her dad's recovering from that gunshot wound. She's in the hospital after her shock at seeing her ex-boyfriend Jude (who's supposed to have died in that building collapse) at the police station when she went to turn herself in.  Her mother is convinced that Mara is suffering a mental breakdown and now needs to have professional counseling. She's sent to outpatient counseling where the other kids in her group are just as mentally disturbed as she is. She's constantly under supervision and her family walks the tightrope of being too protective and too lax with the rules . But don’t worry, Noah is still in the picture, having charming his way into her family's good graces. He’s the only one who believes her when she says that Jude is still alive and is stalking her.

What makes Evolution so riveting is that Mara’s mind is cracking to where she’s distrusting of everyone around her, including herself. Her constant nightmares, memories of the building collapse, the danger that she is to her family and Jude's presence have thrown her off balance. She's barely holding it together.  Noah being the only one who believes her does what he can to investigate and protect her.

And thank goodness for Noah! Evolution is so much darker but Noah brings some relief. He’s always there to ease the tension and soothe her. His humor and snarkiness are perfect for distracting Mara from getting too lost in her mind’s mess.  There were plenty of times when I laughed aloud because of their silly banter –  I'm sure I rolled my eyes at Noah as much as Mara did.

When Mara’s not too busy sliding into insanity or making out with Noah, they’re researching the source of their special “powers”. They’re exploring all kinds of options ranging from genetics to familial connections and even psychics.  But everywhere they turn, there’s a new mystery to solve.

The Evolution of Mara Dyer is thrilling and alarming. I’m not keen on scary reads but the suspense here is all psychological. What makes this book stand out completely is that I had absolutely no frigging idea where the story was headed. I loved feeling as in the dark as Mara felt. 

So I say yes, definitely read this. Don't try and solve the mystery. Just read and follow the descent into madness and by the end you'll be just as astonished as I was. And then you'll be mad because Michelle Hodkin wrote such a brilliant book and she's making us wait another year for the next one. 

 

~ Bel

 

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am by Harry Mazer and Peter Lerangis

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Everything has always come easily to Ben Bright. He’s a solid student, landed the lead in the high school play, and has been with Ariela, his amazing girlfriend for as long as either of them can remember.  Everyone expects great things from Ben. So when Ben enlists in the army right out of high school, they are devastated. His parents don’t understand, Ariela feels abandoned. But when he explains that he feels a deep need to give back, to protect his country, his friends and family reluctantly rally around him and support him.

No one expects the phone call about Ben being in an attack.  He has suffered a brain injury, and the doctors don’t know how extensive the damage is. When Ben comes home, he can barely speak or write or walk – or remember anything about his identity, his family, or his friends.

 

 

Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am was not what I expected. When I picked it up, I thought that I’d get a glimpse inside Ben’s mind as he undergoes the long and hard recovery towards something resembling normal. Instead, the story is more about how everyone is affected by Ben’s decision to join the army.  

I’m not normally a fan of stories with multiple pov’s. The storyline can get too convoluted and burdensome. In this case, it worked effectively.  Ben sets it up at the rehearsal for his play where he’s reveling in the last few days of normalcy with his friends. He hasn’t revealed his intentions to them yet. However, his best friend Niko knows what’s up and calls him out on it. Niko forces him to explain himself. And even though not everyone can comprehend his decision, they are supportive of him.

It’s when the subsequent chapters featuring how the others cope with Ben's leaving that the story gets very engaging.  His absence leaves a gaping hole in their lives and you come to appreciate how much he means to each of them. You also get the heavy sense of their constant worrying about his safety and overall well-being.  Probably the toughest storyline to follow is that of Ben’s brother, Chris who’s autistic. Chris is so detached from what’s happening and knowing how much Ben loves his little brother, everyone makes a point to look out for him while he's away.

I won’t say that Somebody, Please Tell Me Who I Am is a fun read but it's so well written and offers contrasting insights into the lives of loved ones left behind. Each character has remarkable  presence and the different pov’s give the story deeper resonance.  It’s a quick read that I managed to finish in a matter of a few short hours. While it didn’t head in the direction I thought it would, I was pleased with where it ended up. I'll even say that I teared up just a wee bit.

 ~ Bel