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3.5/5
Non-Fiction
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Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 416
Started: 5 June 2024
Finished: 6 June 2024
Summary:
Avery is going to kill herself. She's off the Eaton soccer team, failing her classes, hasn't made any friends all year, and hasn't been able to tell her old best friend Cass that she's in love with her---all in all, Avery has a plan, which she fully means to carry out. Except she's interrupted by Cass, calling to inform her that in nine days a catastrophically massive asteroid is going to hit earth and wipe out the human race. And so, Avery decides, she can make it nine more days. She can go home, can see her family and her best friend again, can find some way to come to terms with her life before it's all over for everyone. What Avery does not expect, in the face of an apocalyptic tragedy, is to discover so many reasons to keep living.
Thoughts:
This book kind of wrecked me. I read the whole thing in almost one sitting, and so the grueling arc from suicidal ideation to love to tragedy was not dulled in the slightest. The story did not shy away from heart-breaking internal thoughts, and Avery's self-hatred and depression were depicted with an intense intimacy and accuracy. Though she was a very private person, refusing to share her struggle with anyone, I as the reader was given a window into her most private thoughts, which was fascinating and created so much empathy.
St. Jude's characters were incredibly well-flushed out. Avery was internally complex in a way that felt touching and cohesive, but the reader simultaneously got a sense of her outward persona, which is a hard thing for an author to successfully achieve. Though her depression obviously influenced a lot of her narration, her personality was at the same time dynamic and compelling. Cass was equally interesting; her suit-wearing, multi-cultural, fasion-minded New Yorker aesthetic was very satisfying (and jealousy-inducing). I also loved Avery's family members, especially her brother and his wife. Their family was unusual, not a set of people or a dynamic I had seen before, but it was well done and touching. The way that the two girls interacted with Christianity and queerness was also nuanced and fascinating. From Avery's parents' homophobia to Avery's very badass conversation with a priest at the end of the novel, the impact of religion and religious trauma was a clear theme in the book.
Most importantly, though, the writing was so impactful. There were a few points, especially at the start of the book, where thoughts and timelines (between past and present especially) felt disjointed and slightly out of order, but by the end of the novel scenes were compelling and dynamic and so touching. The romance was beautiful and sweeping, as were Avery's moments with her family and her self, and the slightly open ending to the novel was the perfect finish to a book written in a liminal setting.
I recommend this book very highly to anyone who feels they won't be negatively impacted by descriptions of depression and very active suicidal ideation; it was hard to read at times, but it's impact was impressive and I'm very glad to have found this book.