Book Review: All We Have is Now by Lisa Schroeder (Reviewed by Teen Reviewer Lexi)

Summary:

What do you do with your last day on earth?

Just over twenty-four hours are left until an asteroid strikes North America, and for Emerson and everyone else who didn’t leave, the world will end. But Emerson’s world already ended when she ran away from home. Since then, she has lived on the streets, relying on her wits and on her friend Vince to help her find places to sleep and food to eat.

The city’s quieter now that most people are gone, and no one seems to know what to do as the end approaches. But then Emerson and Vince meet Carl, who tells them he has been granting people’s wishes—and gives them his wallet full of money.

Suddenly, this last day seems full of possibility. Emerson and Vince can grant a lot of wishes in one last day—maybe even their own.

Lexi’s Thoughts:

‘“But there’s a million stars.

   Maybe I want to be the

   One and only moon instead.’”

When I first saw this book I immediately loved the cover but for the life of me I couldn’t jump into it. The plot itself is very interesting but I felt the writing didn’t really execute it well.

For such a short book it took me forever to finish it and I even at one point almost quit. One of the characters, Emerson, I couldn’t stand. Usually I can relate a little bit to the characters in some way but with her I was constantly banging my head against the wall. I had a problem with how much she whined about how the situation and especially her regularly pushing Vince aside because she feels like it would complicate her life. Like, HELLO, the world is ending yet you are ignoring your own heart because you think dating a guy would cause you more troubles. She had too many traits that I couldn’t even try to like. This made her a bad character for me.

On a good note i really liked the structure of the book. The short chapters make reading the book really easy . The alternating between normal chapters and poem form chapters was fantastically done. I liked how the poems would give information that wouldn’t really fit into the main gist of the chapter but by utilizing poetry the author managed to inform the reader of what has happened or what is going on. Another thing I enjoyed was the point of view. The author uses third person point of view but the reader can still feel that personal attachment to things that you usually only get when written in first.

All in all the book was decent. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a romantic little story with a plot twist ending.

Publisher’s Information: From Scholastic, July 2015. ISBN: 9780545802536

ARC provided by publisher in exchange for an honest review

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