Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach

We All Looked Up

by Tommy Wallach

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2015, 384 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

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.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. 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." - Publishers Weekly

"[A] literary Breakfast Club for a modern generation, and it will surprise readers expecting another clunky dystopian novel with its solid, realistic writing." - Booklist

"Starred Review. A thought-provoking story that will bring out readers' inner philosophers."- Kirkus

"Tommy Wallach's We All Looked Up is a triumphant debut - this generation's The Stand. It is at once troubling, uplifting, scary, and heart-wrenching, and written with so much compassion for our fragile hold on the fleeting here and now. A glorious, wonderful, completely unforgettable novel." - Andrew Smith, author of Winger, Grasshopper Jungle, and 100 Sideways Miles

This information about We All Looked Up was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Danielle

Interesting and Amazing
This book is full of twists and is an amazing read.

Beckyh

Skip this one
Okay, maybe the teens will love this book. I didn’t. There is an awful lot of bad sex, too much drug usage, gratuitous violence, an absent society, clueless parents, messed up kids, a dying father and, oh yes, buried all the dreck is a rather sweet love story. The actual mechanics of the writing is fine. The story is awful. If you want a good “end of the world” story, read Pat Frank’s ALAS, BABYLON. Skip this one.
1 of 5 stars

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Tommy Wallach Author Biography

Photo: Tallie Maughan

Tommy Wallach is a Brooklyn-based musician and novelist. He is the author of Thanks for the Trouble and We All Looked Up, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages and was optioned for film by Paramount. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, Wired, Salon, and other magazines. As a musician, he has put out an EP with Decca Records, as well as two independent releases, including We All Looked Up: The Album, a companion record to his first novel. He is a recent MacDowell Fellow.

Link to Tommy Wallach's Website

Name Pronunciation
Tommy Wallach: WAHL-ehk

Other books by Tommy Wallach at BookBrowse
  • Thanks for the Trouble jacket
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more YA literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...
  • Book Jacket: The Wide Wide Sea
    The Wide Wide Sea
    by Hampton Sides
    By 1775, 48-year-old Captain James Cook had completed two highly successful voyages of discovery and...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.