We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

Synopsis

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

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.

Published Simon & Schuster Books
Released 1st April 2015
ISBN 1481418777 (ISBN13: 9781481418775)  English  We All Looked Up

Review

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review, this does not influence the contents of my review.

What if you found out the world was going you end?

We're to start.....
Beautifully writen to captured all the pain, want and uncertainty of being a teenager. Set in current moden times this tells the story  of a world on the brink of ending. From the prospective  of a  group of students, who come from a diverse mix of back grounds.

Tommy Wallach takes the traditional high school cliques and stereotypes. As the opening quote suggests, the strength of these characters is that it's easy to find little bits of ourselves in them.

I liked how the characters were complex, at times 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.

Through out the story you are left considering what would happen if the world  was to end? How would you react? What would you do for the ones you love?  

The fluidity of the novel as it moved from one perspective to the next. I'm not a big fan of multiple POV. But i can not imagen this story being told from just a single procpective. 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  entwine perfectly.

A good book will talk about the things you may  never have thought about before. They talk about things you didn't think anyone else had thought about.  We all looked up will open your eyes and  will have you looking to the sky's. 

This is definitely a book to put on your 2015 to read list.

Author

Tommy Wallach is a Brooklyn-based writer and musician. His first novel, We All Looked Up, will be published by Simon and Schuster in April 2015. His work has appeared in many nice magazines, such as McSweeney's, Tin House, and Wired. He has released an EP with Decca Records, and will be independently putting out an LP in Spring 2014. He also makes music videos, including one that was exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum. You should buy him dinner.

Official Website
http://www.tommywallach.com
Twitter 
tommywallach