What would you do if you were told there was an impending apocalypse and a 66.6% chance you would die? Tommy Wallach delivers a stunning and clever debut about the end of the world. I was quickly drawn into the worlds of four teenagers, and was captivated by each one’s perspective as they attempt to make sense of the chaos that comes with the apocalypse for themselves and the world around them.

We All Looked Up takes a new spin on your typical apocalypse book. With a 66.6% percent chance of the newly found asteroid Ardor hitting earth, four teenagers are trying to find out what to do with the few weeks of life they have left. Overall I didn't particularly like this book, I found it stereotypical and superficial at times, however that is also the reason why I liked it. It seems likely that what occurred in the novel may honestly occur if we ever did find ourselves in this situation (possibly to a lesser extent).
One of my favourite quotes from the books is <b>'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.'</b> This quote is the essence of up We All Looked Up as we all have thought about what would happen if the world ended but it isn't something we talk about on numerous occasions. I found myself enjoying the book at most when Wallach provided some insight. He wrote poignantly about death at points but majority of the novel left me disappointed as it returned to a typical young adult book talking about sex and drugs. I understand that it is a young adult book, and sex and drugs might be in the forefront of a teenagers' mind when they possibly only have weeks to live but I felt that Wallach explored only a fragment of what it meant for the population to vanish in a matter of moments.

We All Looked Up is a disjointed version of The Breakfast Club, as it features interesting yet stereotypical characters: the overachiever Anita, the slacker Andy, the golden boy Peter and the promiscuous Eliza. I think that it was smart of Wallach to include such popular personalities in his book as readers may be able to relate to a different character and what they are going through such as their final year at school. I enjoyed seeing the characters evolve due to Ardors repercussions and how they all came to have great moments of insight exploring the fleetingness of life: 'People have always said that photography is an attempt to capture something fleeting. And suddenly everything is fleeting. It's like ardor us this special tone of light we've never had before, and it's shining down and infusing every single object and person on the planet.'

For an young adult book I appreciated that Wallach approached the thought of death and how this affects the population to a great extent. It is book I would recommend for those who are in between young adult fiction and adult fiction as it contains the characters and conversations of a teen book but also holds the insight and themes often found in adult fiction.

Lastly here is another quote that I felt sums up We All Looked Up;
'People talked about their days being numbered, but really, everything was numbered. Every movie you watched was the last time you'd watch that movie, or the second to last time, or the third to last. Every kiss was on kiss closer to your last kiss. It was a truly terrifying lens through which to see the increasingly terrifying world.'

This review is an excerpt of one that appeared on Readers in Wonderland.

very once in a while you come across a book that is really hard to explain in words for one reason or another. WE ALL LOOKED UP is one of those books for me, because I finished it three weeks ago and haven’t had time to pen my thoughts until now, and because reading it was sort of a surreal experience, for the first half anyway.

What was surreal about it? In the first half of WE ALL LOOKED UP I read so many concepts and ideas I had thought about and struggled with before. The characters are in their final year of high school, trying to figure out if what they’re doing now and what they want to do in the future is meaningful or just a waste of time. This exact situation was my life a little under three years ago, and those memories are still fresh because these questions I, and many other young adults, continue to ask myself. And I don’t even have that whole “an asteroid may hit the Earth in two months and obliterate two thirds of life” pressure.

Another aspect of WE ALL LOOKED UP I loved was the writing. I already mentioned how Wallach manage to put words I never entirely realised other people thought and put them on a page. Well he didn’t just put the thoughts on paper, he also explained the concepts in the best way possible. Everything was constructed beautifully. So many quotes were marked in the first half of this novel. I have three pages filled in my reading notebook dedicated to this book.

The teenage drama part of the plot was literally the only issue I had with WE ALL LOOKED UP. Everything else I loved, from the characters who were all relateable to the writing and themes this novel presented. This contemporary made me think about life and the future, and that’s what I love my contemporaries to do more than anything.