This was the first book I read in 2026 — and, to be honest, the first book I’ve read in a while that wasn’t Mitch Albom. I’ve owned We All Looked Up for years. It sat on my shelf quietly, waiting. When I finally picked it up, it felt less like discovering something new and more like finally meeting a version of myself that had been standing there all along.
Although this is a novel centered on teenagers, it never once felt limited to youth. If anything, it reminded me that none of us ever fully leave our younger selves behind. We are a collage of every version of ourselves we’ve ever been, stacked year after year, still reacting, still hoping, still afraid. This book understands that deeply.
At its core, We All Looked Up asks an impossible but essential question: What would we do if we knew the world was ending? Not in the abstract way we already understand mortality, but in a concrete, undeniable way — days numbered, no loopholes, no distractions that can fully erase the truth. Who would we become? Who would we love harder? Who would we stop pretending to be? And who around us would finally be revealed for who they truly are?
Wallach doesn’t write about catastrophe as spectacle — he writes about it as a mirror. The looming disaster becomes a lens through which youth apathy, fear, love, denial, rage, and hope are magnified. There’s a sharp awareness of how media transforms existential threat into entertainment, how culture obsesses while simultaneously numbing itself, and how young people are often dismissed even as they’re forced to carry the emotional weight of a broken world.
What struck me most is how eerily current this book feels. It may not be an asteroid hovering in our skies right now, but there is an undeniable sense — culturally, politically, emotionally — that something is coming. That systems are cracking. That the noise is louder, the distractions shinier, and the dread more familiar. The gym culture, the obsession with self-optimization, the constant performance of “being fine” — it all reads as survival tactics in a world that feels increasingly unstable.
And yet, at the center of it all, this is a story about love. Not perfect love, not cinematic love — but the messy, urgent, aching kind that surfaces when time feels scarce. Love as resistance. Love as clarity. Love as something that still matters even when everything else is falling apart.
I won’t spoil anything here, because this book deserves to be experienced without expectation. What I will say is that We All Looked Up carries an immense message — one that feels especially necessary right now. It’s a reminder that apathy is learned, not innate. That young voices are not empty just because they’re uncertain. And that even at the end of the world, meaning doesn’t disappear — it sharpens.
This is a book I believe everyone should read, especially given the state of things. Especially now.
Sometimes, the most important stories aren’t about saving the world — they’re about finally seeing it clearly before it’s too late.
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