We Are the Ants
A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) From the "author to watch" (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes an "equal parts sarcastic and profound" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Only he isn't sure he wants to. After all, life hasn't been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer's. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend's suicide last year. Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him. But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it...or let the world--and his pain--be destroyed forever.
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Community Reviews
NO WORDS TO DESCRIBE HOW GOOD IT IS,,, EVERY OTHER LINE MAKE ME CONTEMPLATE MY LIFE AND EXISTENCE !! READ IT!
I really was waiting for this book to get good and it just didnt happen for me. I loved the idea of the book with the thought that we are all just little ants on this earth. The focus on the one primary character bored me. I thought it was way too much of being all about his romantic relationships. I liked the idea of the book but not the lack luster ending
This would have been 5 stars for me but I felt it weighed too heavy in Henry missing his dead boyfriend. I loved the sci fi and the premise of the story though.
this is a 3.5 star review. I feel like the overall theme of overcoming your mental illnesses and the small analogies throughout the whole book were really really well thought out. I think the ending was a little frustrating because it left me with a lot of questions. I think this is a beautiful book that deserved to be analyzed and poured over academically but i didn’t particularly like it as a fun summer read.
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