We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

by Abigail Fellin
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“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 less alone in this world.”
 
When I first picked this book up at Barnes & Noble, I was intrigued by the image of kids chilling in a field, staring at the sky on the cover. Who are they? What is their story? And why are they all staring at the sky? Basically, I judged this book by the cover and decided I liked it instantly, giving the story high expectations to live up to.
 
Spoiler alert: It did.
 
We All Looked Up follows the story of four high school seniors as they realize it is not graduation they need to worry about, but the end of the world. An asteroid, affectionately called Ardor, is set to hit Earth in 8 weeks, ending life as they know it. This gives them two months to really live.
 
While this sounds like it could just be another apocalyptic story filled with high school drama and teen angst, it is so much more than that. Wallach takes stereotypes—the jock, the slut, the slacker, and the nerd—and turns them into three dimensional characters with insecurities, desires, and fears. The characters quickly change from stock characters to relatable people that readers can easily find a bit of themselves in. While multiple point of view stories can become a volley of going back and forth between different stories, Wallach does an excellent job of weaving the change of POVs together in way that makes the story seem continuous without giving all the characters the same monotonous tone.
 
This story is not without its shortcomings. Although Wallach was able to create multidimensional characters, he does fall into the trope of having a lopsided love triangle—unfortunately, an overused device in books.  Despite this flaw (that sadly spans the length of the book), this novel is still a great read that leads readers to ponder philosophical questions on existentialism.
 
We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach could have crashed and burned like the Ardor is set to crash into the Earth, however it takes on big questions in a non-cheesy, cliché way that intrigues readers from the first page. 

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