And All the Stars

And All the Stars is one of the better YA apocalyptic novels I've read. Towers have sprouted from cities around the world, spreading a strange dust. Those who encounter the dust either die or transform... Madeleine Cost is a fifteen year old artist who's skipping school to go paint a portrait of her cousin. She winds up right next to Sydney's tower and gets absolutely coated in the dust. She teams up with some other teenage survivors to face the new world and what they've become.

I almost quit reading And All the Stars six pages in. Why? The protagonist makes a stupid and completely pointless decision. She's trapped in an abandoned subway, dead bodies around her, and when her mom calls her on the phone she lies about where she is! Wow, priorities! This feels like typical behavior from a YA novel, but I find it very worthy of an eye roll. Thankfully, I did continue reading and the rest of the book improved.

One of the things I liked about And All the Stars was that while it was an apocalyptic novel focused on survival, it was more about friendship than people being nasty and horrible to each other. The group she falls in with and don't turn on each other or (as one character puts it) reenact Lord of the Flies. I like this brand of optimistic apocalypse novels. It reminds me a bit of On the Edge of Gone that way.

While I never exactly fell in love with any of the characters, I can still remember some of their names over a week later, which is always a good sign. As I said, I wasn't super connected to any of them, but it can be hard to flesh out such a large group of characters, especially in a book only 200 pages. Also, I liked that the group roughly gender equal and notably diverse.

I wasn't a huge fan of how the romance subplot went down, but it wasn't super annoying and didn't consume the entire book. Mainly I worry about what a reveal means for consent issues with a sex scene. I don't feel like the implications were really addressed in the text. I also wasn't a fan of the "five years later" epilogue that showed the end result of everyone's lives and romantic prospects. It just didn't feel necessary.

I'd recommend And All the Stars for anyone looking for hopeful apocalypse novels or well written self published books.