Thanks for the Trouble by Tommy Wallach

* * * *

A young man overcomes a crippling loss and finds the courage to live after meeting an enigmatic girl.

“Was this story written about me?”

I shrugged.

“Yes or no?”

I shrugged again, finally earning a little scowl, which somehow made the girl even more pretty.

“It’s very rude not to answer simple questions,” she said.

I gestured for my journal, but she still wouldn’t give it to me. So I took out my pen and wrote on my palm.

I can’t, I wrote. Then, in tiny letters below it: Now don’t you feel like a jerk?

Parker Santé hasn’t spoken a word in five years. While his classmates plan for bright futures, he skips school to hang out in hotels, killing time by watching the guests. But when he meets a silver-haired girl named Zelda Toth, a girl who claims to be quite a bit older than she looks, he’ll discover there just might be a few things left worth living for.

Wallach’s debut We All Looked Up was so stunning that I jumped at the chance to read this. Since WALU was about an impending disaster, I wondered what kind of tone Thanks for the Trouble would have. This fanciful tale featuring two strangers meeting and discovering a camaraderie who go on to create their own adventures, is both hopeful and serious.

Parker seems like a normal kid except that he refuses to speak. All the therapy he’s been through can’t unlock what’s disturbing him the most since the death of his father a few years before. He's simply not ready. He depends on his journal to communicate with people and also to write the many stories that bound through his imagination. Being the odd kid, he resorts to stealing as a hobby. One of his favourite things to do is to hang out at hotel lobbies, which is where he notices Zelda who seems to be lost in her own world. When she leaves the hotel, he sees that she’s left her bag behind and he decides to steal it. Only he can’t bring himself to do it. In the meantime she returns and confronts him about his pitiful attempt at theft. Instead of being upset about it though, she’s intrigued. She announces that they should spend time together. That is until she receives a life-changing phone call that she’s been expecting and at which point they'll part ways.

I was so tuned into this story. Zelda is a larger than life character who’s own personal story is quite unfathomable. Parker doesn’t believe her at all but gets wrapped up in her persona none the less. She’s determined that Parker needs to come out of his shell and also look to his future. She strikes up a deal with him that to him seems one-sided. Parker can’t help but worry about her welfare despite her assurances that she doesn’t require any help. He is such a sweetheart and a good-natured guy. Meeting Zelda has lifted his spirits and given him the push he needs at this crucial time in his life. The best is when it dawns on him that even though he’s retreated into himself, he isn’t alone and that he can still be a part of a social circle that embraces him wholeheartedly. 

Once again, Wallach’s writing is solid and alluring, weaving together Parker's contemporary world with Zelda's fairytale of a life. What I admire about his books so far is that he writes his characters as smart and insightful. He's great at capturing significant moments that are set within a limited timeframe. And the location being in San Francisco, one of my favourite places ever, made me enjoy the story that much more. 

Thanks for the Trouble is charming, witty and heart-warming and I have nothing but fondness for this little treasure!

~ Bel

Waiting on Wednesday (176)

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that highlights future releases that we are excitedly anticipating.



By Andy Jones
Publication Date: February 9, 2016

Falling in love is the easy part. What matters most is what happens next...

Fisher and Ivy have been an item for a whole nineteen days. And they just know they are meant to be together. The fact that they know little else about each other is a minor detail. Over the course of twelve months, in which their lives will change forever, Fisher and Ivy discover that falling in love is one thing, but staying there is an entirely different story.

The Two of Us is a charming, honest and heart-breaking novel about life, love, and the importance of taking neither one for granted.












By Tommy Wallach
Publication Date: February 23, 2016

Tommy Wallach, the New York Times bestselling author of the “stunning debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) We All Looked Up, delivers a brilliant new novel about a young man who overcomes a crippling loss and finds the courage to live after meeting an enigmatic girl.

“Was this story written about me?”
I shrugged.
“Yes or no?”
I shrugged again, finally earning a little scowl, which somehow made the girl even more pretty.
“It’s very rude not to answer simple questions,” she said.
I gestured for my journal, but she still wouldn’t give it to me. So I took out my pen and wrote on my palm.
I can’t, I wrote. Then, in tiny letters below it: Now don’t you feel like a jerk?

Parker Santé hasn’t spoken a word in five years. While his classmates plan for bright futures, he skips school to hang out in hotels, killing time by watching the guests. But when he meets a silver-haired girl named Zelda Toth, a girl who claims to be quite a bit older than she looks, he’ll discover there just might be a few things left worth living for.

From the celebrated author of We All Looked Up comes a unique story of first and last loves.





By Shannon M. Parker
Publication Date:  March 1, 2016

His obsession.
Her fall.

In this dark kissing book, high school senior Zephyr Doyle is swept off her feet—and into an intense relationship—by the new boy in school.

Zephyr is focused. Focused on leading her team to the field hockey state championship and leaving her small town for her dream school, Boston College.

But love has a way of changing things.

Enter the new boy in school: the hockey team’s starting goaltender, Alec. He’s cute, charming, and most important, Alec doesn’t judge Zephyr. He understands her fears and insecurities—he even shares them. Soon, their relationship becomes something bigger than Zephyr, something she can’t control, something she doesn’t want to control.

Zephyr swears it must be love. Because love is powerful, and overwhelming, and…terrifying?

But love shouldn’t make you abandon your dreams, or push your friends away. And love shouldn’t make you feel guilty—or worse, ashamed.

So when Zephyr finally begins to see Alec for who he really is, she knows it’s time to take back control of her life.

If she waits any longer, it may be too late. 

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

* * * * *

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.