Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    We All Looked Up
    We All Looked Up
    We All Looked Up
    Audiobook9 hours

    We All Looked Up

    Written by Tommy Wallach

    Narrated by Hannah Dunne, Sarah Steele, Seth Numrich and Peter Vack

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Four high school seniors put their hopes, hearts, and humanity on the line as an asteroid hurtles toward Earth in Tommy Wallach’s New York Times bestselling “stunning debut” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateMar 24, 2015
    ISBN9781442386761
    Author

    Tommy Wallach

    Tommy Wallach is the author of the Anchor & Sophia trilogy, Thanks for the Trouble, and the New York Times bestselling We All Looked Up, which has been translated into over a dozen languages. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Wired, and other magazines, and he is a MacDowell Fellow. He was signed to Decca Records as a singer-songwriter, and has independently released two full-length albums, including We All Looked Up: The Album, a companion record to his first novel. He currently lives in Los Angeles, where he recently opened up his first escape room, and is working on bringing his novels to various sorts of screens. Grok more at TommyWallach.com.

    More audiobooks from Tommy Wallach

    Related to We All Looked Up

    Related audiobooks

    YA Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Under The Whispering Door

      Nov 3, 2021

      ▶ RELEASED OUT NOW! 376 pages | Hardback/ebook/audiobook ▶ Author TJ Klune ▶ Publisher Tor An uneven yet goodhearted hybrid of Dead Like Me and The Good Place, Under The Whispering Door ponders what happens when you don’t start actually living your l

      1 min read

    • Article

      How To Install Your First Widget

      Feb 9, 2021

      > As you would expect with Apple, the company has made installing widgets in iOS 14 a piece of cake. Your device will come with Apple apps that have their own widgets ready to go, although you might have to launch third-party apps at least once befor

      1 min read

    • Article

      Decisions, Decisions

      Aug 27, 2020

      Decisions, Decisions
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Summer We Lost Her

      Apr 4, 2019

      The Summer We Lost Her
      8 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • Article

      Hot Right Now!

      Aug 10, 2023

      Do you want a page-turner to grip you this season? Well, we might just have the one for you… If you could go back, knowing what happens after you die, everything that spirals after that one moment, would you change the course of history? Or would you

      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘On Stage, I Could Escape’: Sir Patrick Stewart On Childhood Trauma And Acting Success

      Oct 1, 2023

      Patrick Stewart grew up in a small terraced home in a town called Mirfield, on the edge of the Pennines. There was no running hot water, no indoor toilet, no central heating. For a long time he shared a bed with his brother, Trevor, who was five year

      13 min read

    • Article

      My Audience

      Dec 1, 2022

      THEY LIVE in Texas and work supervising immigrant landscapers, live on farms with their extended families. Their patriarchs committed suicide after years of drinking so much that they disappeared for days on end. They hid their booze bottles in the b

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Trojan War Museum’: Featured Fiction from Ayse Papatya Bucak

      Aug 20, 2019

      An excerpt from O. Henry and Pushcart Prize winner Ayse Papatya Bucak’s debut collection. The post ‘The Trojan War Museum’: Featured Fiction from Ayse Papatya Bucak appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      LettEr BoCkS

      Oct 15, 2020

      WHILST strolling up Blackpool promenade last night, I thought of a new attraction mixing the annual autumn light show with the world of Greek hard cheese, called ‘Blackpool Hallouminations’. I’m not sure how many tourists this would pull in, but it’s

      13 min read

    • Article

      Book Extract

      May 16, 2022

      Book Extract
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reading CORNER

      Jun 18, 2023

      A darkly witty flashback to school and the ’80s Maybe it was the grey weather or being at the end of a too-busy week, but I was feeling blah. What I needed was some reading that wasn’t entirely harrowing or relentlessly bleak. A smart, witty page-tur

      3 min read

    • Article

      Australia Reads At Home

      May 18, 2020

      Australia Reads At Home
      7 min read

    • Article

      Letter Bocks

      Feb 3, 2022

      Viz Comic, P.O. Box 841 Whitley Bay, NE26 9EQ letters@viz.co.uk ⁕ PAGE 3 girl Samantha Fox’s song Touch Me (I Want Your Body) is nonsense. “Touch me, touch me. I wanna feel your body” she sings. Well, if she wants to feel a body, she should be the to

      13 min read

    • Article

      Cycles

      Nov 10, 2022

      His online profile was promising: good hair, straight teeth, college degree. And he was nice-looking too, in his photo anyway, standing on a clifftop with the sun rising over his welldefined, muscular shoulder. He was attractive enough, the kind of u

      18 min read

    • Article

      Why Grouchy, Rude 'Catwad' Is Catnip To Kids

      Jul 25, 2019

      Our monthly children's book column returns with a look at the dubious (to adults, at least) charms of cartoonist Jim Benton's grouchy feline Catwad, whose mastery of the anti-joke is catnip to kids.

      4 min read

    • Article

      How It Was

      Jun 10, 2022

      How It Was
      3 min read

    • Article

      Dads Behaving Badly

      Jun 16, 2017

      Dads Behaving Badly
      5 min read

    • Article

      THE SECRET Keepers

      Sep 2, 2020

      THE SECRET Keepers
      9 min read

    • Article

      Green Ticket To Ride

      Feb 19, 2024

      Green Ticket To Ride
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mammy Dearest

      Mar 20, 2022

      Noelle McCarthy, the broadcaster, podcaster and journalist, has two obsessions: her mother and Dracula. She has written a memoir, Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter, in which both characters flounce across the pages, one with fangs wearing a cape,

      8 min read

    • Article

      Superman

      May 7, 2018

      Superman
      16 min read

    • Article

      Hot Right Now!

      Aug 12, 2021

      Alice Gunnersley and Alfie Mack sleep just a few feet apart from one another. They talk for hours every day yet they’ve never seen each other face-to-face. After both being in terrible accidents, they share the same ward as long-term hospital residen

      2 min read

    • Article

      Anne of Cleves

      Sep 19, 2019

      Anne of Cleves
      28 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for We All Looked Up

    3.5/5

    149 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Hopefulness in the midst of what could be the end of the world. A great cast of real characters who are trying to figure out the roles they have in the life they lead. So good! I loved it!
    • 2/5
      This book started out intriguingly enough -- with the typical angst and triumphs in a high school day -- only to have it put into screaming perspective with the announcement that an asteroid (Ardor) is on a collision course with earth -- 66 and 2/3rds percent chance of impact -- in 6 weeks. The book is set in Seattle and the students we are introduced to and meant to champion include basketball star Peter & his misguided sister Misery aka Samantha, their unbelievably one-dimensional parents, Stacy, Peter's princess-y girlfriend -- who isn't "deep" enough to stay in the story, artsy and slutty-in-a-feminist-kind-of-way Eliza who eventually hooks up with Peter, Andy, perpetual slacker and pothead, Bobo his dealer friend and Misery's boyfriend, and Anita, former straight-A, straight-laced uber-controlled student who wants to sing and gets together with Andy. It's like an apocalyptic Breakfast Club. Initially, these young adults have some deep thoughts and responses to the impending doom, but then the inmates begin to run the asylum and it deteriorates into chases and riots and bad decision making and ultimately death for one, though he was well enough to walk on his own only a short time before his demise which isn't even from the asteroid or its aftermath. "The freak shall inherit the earth" p. 227) about sums it up. The turning point toward implausibility is when a handful of them get thrown into a detention center after being rounded up after a public demonstration that goes south. While the book does raise good questions about what one would do with a global death sentence, and what really comes down to the important things, it gets off track and mired in teen impulsivity. The adults in the novel are complete idiots, which is the point? And the ending leaves you hanging --- which may also be the point. Compared to Age of Miracles this falls short in the lasting impact category.
    • 5/5
      “Why had he assumed time was some sort of infinite resource? Now the hourglass had busted open, and what he’s always assumed was just a bunch of sand turned out to be a million tiny diamonds.”I really was surprised by this book. I’m not sure why, but I was kind of expecting not to love this. But I did. It was amazing.This book really got me thinking about what I would do if I had two months to live. I also felt like the characters were really realistic. I found myself entirely wrapped up in the story. It helped that the author created an album to go with it. I played the music while reading to become totally immersed.Definitely recommend.
    • 4/5
      An asteroid is on a collision course with earth (or maybe a near collision course... scientists can't quite pin it down for certain, but it looks like there's a 2/3 chance that the Earth will be obliterated.)The story follows four high school students in the final 12 weeks before the collision (or near collision).There is Peter (the jock), Andy (the slacker), Anita (the brain), and Eliza (the slut). Each of 10 greater chapters has a lesser chapter devoted to each of these four characters. The author imagines what would happen in society at large and to individuals up close, if we knew that we had only 12 weeks left to live. As in the movie "The Breakfast Club," each of the four stereotyped characters turns out to be much more than they seem on the outside at the beginning of the book.I would almost give this a 4 star, but cut it back by a half because I found it impossible to believe Anita would ever, even with a coming apocalypse, be attracted to Andy, and because the ending wasn't quite satisfactory to me. There were a few extras that the conclusion needed that just weren't there. Still, this teen fiction tale does a nice job of creating an impossible (Ok... highly, highly unlikely) situation, and imagining what would happen in that situation.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoyed this - the characters, the storytelling, the pacing. If you love YA novels, you'll devour this one.
    • 3/5
      I had mixed feelings about this book. I liked the premise . . . how would the world behave if it looked likely that the world as you knew it could end in a few weeks? Do you just carry on and hope it's wrong? If you leave, where do you go? What is the point of your life? The story is told through the eyes of various teenagers. It often felt as if the author was jumping around dealing with big issues, and also trying to be appealing to teenagers. I'd like to think of the world was ending, there would be a lot less pettiness, but that isn't necessarily the case. I didn't like many of the kids much. Despite that, it does tackle an interesting situation that surely would result in a range of behaviors . . . some, perhaps, like those in the book.
    • 1/5
      WE ALL LOOKED UP by Tommy WallachOkay, 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 in 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
    • 3/5
      A diverse cast of Seattle teens are forced to face up to who they are as the prospect of a meteor destroying the earth turns the city and their lives into chaos. I read this book because it was a top seller at my local kids bookstore, but I’d think carefully about which of my students I might recommend it to. It is not one of those YA books with broader adult appeal and definitely not for younger readers due to sex, drugs and language. I think it could resonate with high school seniors who may find parallels between the end of the world and the unknown of life after high school, or to teens who need a little push to have the courage to pursue their own dreams rather than the ones their parents have for them.
    • 3/5
      "Question: How could you look the end of the world in the face and not go crazy? Answer: You couldn’t."We All Looked Up has a wonderful cover. I think it’s one of the first things that drew me to the book. I’m pleased to say that I was not fooled by a pretty cover.I found this story quite enjoyable, first of all, because it really makes you think. It’s about the end of the world, and what would you do if you knew exactly when it was going to end. I like how it was explored and I think it was very realistic.The writing is so beautiful. Seriously. I would just stare in awe at a lot of paragraphs because the author really has a way with words."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." The book is narrated in 3rd person with the point of view various characters . Each character is completely different, but I really really enjoyed Eliza’s point of view most of all. I think that she was one of the most cynical voices of the lot. She had a view of the world that made her POV all the much more tragic. It made the book much more heartbreaking.Eliza thought about all the things she’d hoped to do in her life, all the lives she’d wanted to live. She could see them now, jagged paths cut into the shadowy future, lit up in small bursts of light. My only issue with this book is that it tried so painfully hard to be teenage. In some POVs, the word “like” was added to almost every other sentence. (I.e. “He, like, wrecked my life.” “I’d be, like,…” “Because, like…”). There was also some really obvious jargon that was meant to sound teenage (totes, totally, dude, bro) but came off as forced most of the time. There was also some chaos (and I mean chaos) at the middle of the book, where everything felt sort of disjointed and not really going anywhere. I had to force myself to get past that part.However, once we get past that little rough patch, the book uses the wonderful and brilliant writing to end it on a very beautiful and poignant note. It’s an open ending, but in the very best way. It made the book feel almost alive.Overall, Tommy Wallach uses wonderful prose and writing to deliver a story that’ll make you think about the preciousness of life and the importance of living.“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 one kiss closer to your last kiss.”
    • 4/5
      ‘Andy pointed upward. She followed the line extending from his index finger out into the dark distance. A single spark of bright blue, like a puncture in the black skin of the sky.’Imagine if you had to grapple with the knowledge that there’s a 66.6% chance that the bright light hovering in the sky is headed straight towards Earth. Imagine if you were told that even if there’s a chance it won’t happen, if it does, you have only six weeks before it happens. What would you change? What would you do? How would you choose to live your final six weeks of life?We All Looked Up centers around four high school seniors trying to find out who they are while struggling to look beyond who they’ve been defined as. Their attempts to do so take on a frantic state when the news gets out about the asteroid named Ardor. Peter is a star athlete with a steady girlfriend but is drawn to Eliza in a way that he can no longer ignore even if it means for once not doing what is expected of him. Eliza fought against being labeled a ‘slut’ but has since decided to simply be and do whatever she wants despite the names people call her. Her father is dying of cancer and her mother has abandoned them; taking pictures of the crumbling world around her is the way she finds to cope. Anita is a straight A student that has only ever done what her father has told her to do but has finally decided that for once it’s time she admit to herself that what she truly wants to do in life is sing. Andy is the stereotypical slacker that hangs with the wrong crowd and must decide for himself whether he’s able to continue following the pack or if he’s ready to finally wake up and make his own decisions.While all four of these characters (and several secondary characters) were all stereotypical in their own way, Wallach adds an impressive depth to each one of them that I loved watching unfold. The story itself is almost stereotypical as well, with the asteroid headed to Earth and all of humanity faced with their impending doom. Dun Dun Dun. But this story managed to complete impress me with the route that it took and the ambiguous ending that will manage to leave you satisfied even when you’re still left with questions. Nothing is for certain, anything could change… you just never really know for sure about anything in life. We All Looked Up is an elegantly written and philosophical pre-apocalyptic tale that will leave you contemplating your own existence.
    • 3/5
      When an asteroid threatens to destroy Earth, a group of Seattle teenagers is forced to evaluate their current paths in life and what's really important to them. Is that path one they chose, one which they're parents picked for them, or a path they stumbled onto and just went with rather than having to actively make a choice for themselves? What should they do with the two months they have left?It's important to know this story's definitely more about the characters' forced coming of age in the face of the impending apocalypse than the actual end of the world. Recommended to teenagers masquerading as someone they're supposed to be or someone they're parents want them to be, especially if who they truly are is a singer, musician and/or photographer.3 starsDisclaimer: There were some f-bombs, sexual situations and drug use.
    • 4/5
      I wanted to read We All Looked Up because the idea of the teens really evaluating their life, what they are doing with it, and if they are happy about the direction in the face of a comet that might collide with the earth. The characters are pretty varied. Peter is a jock who is also pretty smart, but his history teacher was asking questions about success and failure that really started his evaluating his life goals. Eliza from one incident of kissing Peter while he had a girlfriend and being caught, she has earned the reputation of a slut. She kind of embraces it, even though she hadn't been with guys before it felt like the whole school turned against her. She found out her dad had terminal cancer and then she started sleeping with random guys at an all ages club. She feels like life is just suffering on top of more suffering, and it has jaded her. Andy is a slacker type, skate boards, smokes pot, absent from school a lot. His best friend BoBo is the ring leader and because of a big breach of trust in their friendship takes advantage of Andy now. Andy is connected to Peter through Bobo dating Peter's goth little sister Misery. He also has had a long time crush on Eliza, even before her "slut" time period. Anita is the fourth character, and she is under a lot of pressure from her Dad for her grades and her future. She feels like he views her as an investment and she doesn't want to disappoint him. But she dreams of being a singer, but that conflicts so much with his Ivy League plan for her. She sees Andy outside guidance one day and she was crying and he told her that whatever it was wasn't worth it, and that has stuck in her mind. Ardor, the asteroid, is also another connection with them all. They all notice it when it appears as a blue star in the sky, and their lives becomes even more intertwined as the news of the possibility of hitting earth becomes more and more real, and larger a possibility. Anita goes after Andy and the lyrics and softer music that he's written but doesn't normally play because Bobo is more of a screamer. While Eliza takes her photography to the next level, snapping pictures at school and around town of the changes. The thieves and drug dealers are coming above ground, homicide is up, so the police presence has been elevated. She also gets pictures of kids from her school banding together, of Peter, who is trying to make more of a difference volunteering. The plot was fast paced and the growth of the characters as well as the evolution of their relationships and realizations was driven by near certain death in double digit numbers to begin with and quickly hurling toward single. I was pretty satisfied by the way it ended although was sad at some of the losses. A few of the characters realized their dreams and goals while others were left with regrets and what if weighing heavily on their minds. I have read other books with the similar theme of days to live and end of the world approaching. This one was unique in that it also highlighted the decline in society and morals in time before. Yes there was a lot of unity towards the very last days but there were also really dark moments, showing the bad side of characters and others in society. I guess things like this will bring out the extremes.Bottom Line: Interesting look at a group of high school students questioning their lives and choices in face of asteroid set to collide with earth.
    • 1/5
      I first noticed this book when I saw a post about the book cover. It was a funny post. Thus I became more curious to read this book. When I got the chance to I jumped on it. I am disappointed. None of the characters grew on me. In fact, I found them off putting and they could be just like anyone else on the street. I would not be able to pick them out of a line up as they were so uninteresting to me. I thought it was me at first and so I did try to stick with this book but gave up. Besides the characters the language was surprising. The "f" word was used. Which I do not have a problem with curse words if they have a reason to be used. This also applies to curse words in movies. Yet, I saw no reason for the curse words to be used in the book and thought it not right since younger readers will probably be reading this book as well. So needless I barely made a dent in this book. Bummer. Had high hopes.
    • 2/5
      Like 2013's TUMBLE & FALL by Alexandra Coutts, WE ALL LOOKED UP is a contemporary YA novel that follows a group of teens during the weeks before an asteroid destroys the planet. The books have an identical premise, multiple POV's, and similar characters. If you liked one, you'll probably like the other. Unfortunately, I didn't care for T&F and the same held true for WALU. The problem I seem to have with books like this is that they really aren't about 'the premise.' It's not about an asteroid, it's about a girl who embraced a false reputation when her dad got sick, another who longs to break free from the impossible expectations set by her parents to pursue a singing career, an athlete struggling to find the meaning of life, and a laid back slacker who...wants everyone to chill out. Okay, fine. If any of those stories/characters intrigue you, pick up this book. Personally, I wasn't grabbed by any of them. I found them to be fairly generic and cliche. And while the writing was fine, it wasn't strong enough to elevate these tired tropes to anything memorable. Ultimately, this book left me bored and longing for John Green or Maggie Stiefvater to take on an end of the world premise.