Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
3.5 ⭐️’s I should start this review by saying that I was fifteen when I bought this book and I am now twenty-one. I enjoyed the book but I know that I would have liked it much better at the age that I bought it.
That being said, it was a good YA novel. It had its cliches and annoying moments, one being that it was clearly written by a songwriter. That’s not necessarily a problem but I’ve found that songwriters that write YA books tend to have an M.O, surprisingly, in my opinion Tommy Wallach pulls it off.
I liked the concept. I didn’t feel the frenzy of the end of the world as it was described. It was a very much tell and not show. The book focuses more on the relationships and connections to everyone.
I actually have a hard time eating this book. As a YA novel, if put in a category with books like John Green’s or books like Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, I’d rate this high. As just an average read, though, while I enjoyed it I feel like it’s forgettable and didn’t make me feel in the way some books are able to.
That being said, it was a good YA novel. It had its cliches and annoying moments, one being that it was clearly written by a songwriter. That’s not necessarily a problem but I’ve found that songwriters that write YA books tend to have an M.O, surprisingly, in my opinion Tommy Wallach pulls it off.
I liked the concept. I didn’t feel the frenzy of the end of the world as it was described. It was a very much tell and not show. The book focuses more on the relationships and connections to everyone.
I actually have a hard time eating this book. As a YA novel, if put in a category with books like John Green’s or books like Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, I’d rate this high. As just an average read, though, while I enjoyed it I feel like it’s forgettable and didn’t make me feel in the way some books are able to.
Książka mi sie nie podobała. Dialogi wydawały mi się sztuczne. Styl pisania autora wybitnie nie przypadł mi do gustu. Zakończenie mogło być lepsze.
I thought that the concept of this book was really interesting. However, I didn’t like the execution of it. The characters were what bothered me the most. I count really relate to any of them, they just seemed too far from my reach. But the style(word choice) in this book is amazing. It was clear what the author was trying to articulate, but it wasn’t all simple vocabulary. The way the characters spoke seemed to highlight their personality, and even though I didn’t like the characters, they were well developed throughout the book.
This is a wonderful book full of rich well-developed people who have complex feelings. The backdrop of the story is the comet, though, despite the lone review stating it to similar to Stephen King's The Stand.
The most refreshing thing on the book was something I haven't seen since reading Perks of Being a Wallflower: teenagers are real teenagers. They drink, they do drugs, they have sex, just like teenagers are wont to do, anyone else who says differently must have lived a very sheltered life. Each one of the characters brings their own complexities and their own problems.
While the whole guiding thing seems to bridge on that one moment, I stand on what I said earlier that the backdrop of the story is the comet. I thought about the story as a whole (as a writer and a critical reader is wont to do) and saw that there were no frayed ends left, everything really was about the characters and how they changed and matured as the events unfolded.
Maybe that's probably a bone of contention, because we read this book in such a smaller time span than the events unfold, we feel the urgency of the story and that the characters are maybe wasting too much time on this high-school drama bit they seemed to be carrying about.
While I won't give away the whole ending, it felt different in a whole different way. It's not a book about survival, or about the pre-apocalyptic world that was developed in the story, but the people involved and how it impacts them (no pun intended).
The most refreshing thing on the book was something I haven't seen since reading Perks of Being a Wallflower: teenagers are real teenagers. They drink, they do drugs, they have sex, just like teenagers are wont to do, anyone else who says differently must have lived a very sheltered life. Each one of the characters brings their own complexities and their own problems.
While the whole guiding thing seems to bridge on that one moment, I stand on what I said earlier that the backdrop of the story is the comet. I thought about the story as a whole (as a writer and a critical reader is wont to do) and saw that there were no frayed ends left, everything really was about the characters and how they changed and matured as the events unfolded.
Maybe that's probably a bone of contention, because we read this book in such a smaller time span than the events unfold, we feel the urgency of the story and that the characters are maybe wasting too much time on this high-school drama bit they seemed to be carrying about.
While I won't give away the whole ending, it felt different in a whole different way. It's not a book about survival, or about the pre-apocalyptic world that was developed in the story, but the people involved and how it impacts them (no pun intended).
First of all, the blurb on the back of the book says "this generation's The Stand".
Um.
No.
Not even close.
I thought, from the description, I might be in store for a Breakfast Club type end of the world story which would have been awesome good.
Um.
No.
Totally not where that description was pointing.
It had all the makings of a half decent apocalyptic story but then failed to deliver. There was definitely not enough character development; I couldn't really grasp why any of the characters did the things they did - nothing I had learned about them lead me to believe that action A was something that they would do.
Also, the slut shaming....puh-lease. You can't just throw in a "but I do what I want for my reasons" speech and call all the rest of the misogyny good.
And the ending was like when your sparkler burns out. No exciting bang, or extra bright dying ember...just a fizzle.
Um.
No.
Not even close.
I thought, from the description, I might be in store for a Breakfast Club type end of the world story which would have been awesome good.
Um.
No.
Totally not where that description was pointing.
It had all the makings of a half decent apocalyptic story but then failed to deliver. There was definitely not enough character development; I couldn't really grasp why any of the characters did the things they did - nothing I had learned about them lead me to believe that action A was something that they would do.
Also, the slut shaming....puh-lease. You can't just throw in a "but I do what I want for my reasons" speech and call all the rest of the misogyny good.
And the ending was like when your sparkler burns out. No exciting bang, or extra bright dying ember...just a fizzle.
It was a fun read but personally it was a bit slow paced until half way into the book. Another thing was the ending, for my liking should of been better but I understood why the author wrote it that way. Overall a good read but could of been better.
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.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
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.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
emotional
hopeful
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
do you think it is better to fail at something worthwhile or succeed at something meaningless?