We All Looked Up
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4.2 • 108 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in Tommy Wallach’s New York Times bestselling “stunning debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Like the best kind of teen movie, We All Looked Up is simultaneously wild and irreverent and touchingly poignant. First-time author Tommy Wallach (who’s also a talented singer/songwriter) imagines the lives of four Seattle teenagers in the weeks leading up to a predicted asteroid strike that would destroy life as we know it. Wallach’s main characters are familiar high school types—the precocious artist, the thoughtful jock, the wastoid, and the sick-of-being-good girl—but he inhabits their brains with dazzling clarity. We ripped through this end-days tale, a bittersweet celebration of youthful angst and rebellion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An asteroid named Ardor is on course to destroy the world. As four Seattle teenagers count down the weeks until impact, they wrestle with the meaning of their lives and their possible deaths. Peter, a basketball golden boy, must decide if he should save his sister from her nihilistic boyfriend and whether true love is worth ignoring the status quo. Eliza, a photographer with an unseemly reputation, negotiates her father's cancer diagnosis, her mother's abandonment, and the need to chronicle the chaos erupting around her, while finding herself drawn to Peter. Rounding out the story's rotating voices are Anita, a straight-A student who just wants to sing, and Andy, a slacker who must decide where his loyalties lie and how to handle his dangerous friends. Debut novelist Wallach increases the tension among characters throughout, ending in a shocking climax that resonates with religious symbolism. Stark scenes alternating between anarchy and police states are counterbalanced by deepening emotional ties and ethical dilemmas, creating a novel that asks far bigger questions than it answers. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
Couldn't have been better.
Everything about this book is amazing. People say it gets boring towards the middle, but that's symbolism for the uncertainty you would have in this situation, as with the over abundance of emotion in the very end. Fantastically written and beautifully presented, this truly is the best book I've ever read.
goodie
there was something very satisfying about reading this book. highly recommend
My Favorite
Honestly, I think Wallach did I great job with this book and I deem it my favorite. Even the album to go along with the story captured all the emotions and locked away feelings that are attained while reading this book.