From the Bookshelf of Between The Pages…

I Hope You Get This Message

Farah Naz Rishi

Start date: June 1, 2021

Finish date: June 30, 2021

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Discussion leader: Sylvs (NOVELty Reads)

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Dec 05, 2021 akacya ❦ rated it really liked it

Shelves: own, format-audiobook, audience-young-adult, asian-authors, genre-sci-fi

Planet Alma contacts Earth to let its citizens know that they will be killing it in one week. Of course, everyone takes this news differently. This story follows three teens on their journeys in this last week. Jesse, a non-believer, is profiting off of people’s fears. Cate is desperate to find the father she’s never met, though she is a bit worried leaving her mom behind. Adeem is looking for his estranged sister who he’s having trouble forgiving. Their paths intertwine in these last few days.

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Jun 26, 2021 Sylvs (NOVELty Reads) rated it liked it · review of another edition

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Hmmm... I still don't know how I feel about this one.

On the one hand I liked the characters, the writing style and the story concept but on the other hand, I felt like there were some parts that really dragged and some that were too fast. I think I'm going to rate this somewhere in the middle since I've been very indecisive with my rating since I finished the book.

The book is told in three perspectives: Jesse's, a misfit gay teenager who, with h Read as the Moderator's BOTM for Between the Pages

Hmmm... I still don't know how I feel about this one.

On the one hand I liked the characters, the writing style and the story concept but on the other hand, I felt like there were some parts that really dragged and some that were too fast. I think I'm going to rate this somewhere in the middle since I've been very indecisive with my rating since I finished the book.

The book is told in three perspectives: Jesse's, a misfit gay teenager who, with his mum, is trying to pay the overdue rent, Adeem's who is trying to find his sister who ran away after coming out to his family and Cate's who's trying to find the dad she's never met. All three story lines come together during a period of one week as they try to make connections with their lost loved ones due to Alma's termination of their "Epoch Project", ending the lives of all humans in order to create a habitable planet for them.

This book focused more on connection however, to me, it took a lot of time to get there. When I felt like the story was progressing, it didn't and I felt like we were just going around in circles for ages and ages. It wasn't until page 350 or so that things really started to pick up and I found myself enjoying the book more but by then, it was too late. It wasn't enough to make me love this book more and it wasn't enough to overturn the other half of the book. The previous 350 pages felt so slow and I even wondered to myself if any of it was really necessary to the plot. Yes, the journey to find Cate's dad and Adeem's sister was central to the plot but there were parts during those scenes that added so much unnecessary content that really could've been focused more towards the ending (which felt very rushed in comparison).

Just thinking about the ending makes me feel unsatisfied, I want more answers and I feel like I'd never get them. I want to know what happened to Earth but I guess the ending was open ended for a reason which low key annoyed me since I like having closed endings in standalone books. I guess my annoyance comes from major revelations happening five pages from the end of the book which even just sounds like it wouldn't be dragged out to a satisfactory level. I wanted more answers, I wanted more connection and (okay) I totally wanted more romance. I didn't get enough of either of those three things when really, it was all I was looking forward to towards the end.

Looking at the positives though, I did like the characters and I liked the writing style of the author. I found the book very easy to read and I liked the touches with the radios and sending messages through radio waves. I thought it was really cool. I liked Jesse's chapters a lot and even though it was insinuated that Jesse (kind of) liked Corbin as more of a friend, I wished we got to know Corbin a little more or spent more time with him. I blame the fact that a majority of the story was following Cate and Adeem who made up a large extent of the book even though a lot of their parts (specifically the journey to Roswell which made them go back and forth between Roswell and Las Vegas and I think Albuquerque at some point) felt very long and took away from the book in my opinion. I did like their backstories and the reasons why they were going all the way out into Roswell though. I loved how there was a strong focus on coming together at the end of the world and on family both by blood and found.

All in all, it was a well written book but I did find a lot of parts dragged for too long and others felt really rushed. I did like the characters even though a lot of the situations they were in seemed a bit over the top. I guess that's what happens during an apocalypse.

ACTUAL RATING: 3.2 STARS ...more

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Jul 13, 2021 Eileen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: teen-young-adult, 2021-ng-group-challenge, science-fiction, 2021, audiobook, 2021genrechallenge, dystopian, contemporary, lgbtq

3.5 stars

I enjoyed this book a little bit more than I thought I would. The story is narrated from the point of view of three teens as well as the occasional interlude with the aliens. Except for the aliens, this is pretty straightforward realistic fiction and when the aliens are not in the picture, they're talked about as an outside entity that is probably going to destroy the world in seven days unless something drastic happens. Jesse is a misfit gay teen who tends to get in trouble both in sch 3.5 stars

I enjoyed this book a little bit more than I thought I would. The story is narrated from the point of view of three teens as well as the occasional interlude with the aliens. Except for the aliens, this is pretty straightforward realistic fiction and when the aliens are not in the picture, they're talked about as an outside entity that is probably going to destroy the world in seven days unless something drastic happens. Jesse is a misfit gay teen who tends to get in trouble both in school and out of school. His single mother is barely making ends meet and he's doing what he can just to survive and somehow pay the rent. Adeem is searching for his sister who ran away just after coming out to her family. And Cate is searching for her father who left before he even knew of her existence. At the beginning, you find out that the Alma aliens created the humans as part of the Epoch project and they will terminate the project by wiping out the humans and starting over from scratch. They send out a message to let the humans know and not surprisingly, humans behave both selfishly and lovingly depending on their circumstances and who they're interacting with. The alien trial over the project is interjected throughout and serves as an outside voice telling us all the ways their human project has been a failure and why they will never amount to more. Global warming, humans acting in selfish ways, wars, and so on are all mentioned as reasons why the experiment is a failure. In the meantime, some of what they mention are echoed in the actions of the people as everyone scrambles to do what they want to do before the world ends for them. Individually, Cate, Adeem, and Jesse all make decisions to reach out to their family members and this journey causes their paths to cross, with Cate and Adeem's paths crossing fairly early on.

I think the writing in this book is very good and I ended up liking the three main characters as they reacted to the situation at hand. But it was slow in developing and I wasn't always sure where the story was going. The ending also felt rather rushed and a little bit more open-ended than I would have preferred. I liked the overall plot, but I didn't feel as tied to it as I was hoping. The stuff with the aliens was interesting, but I wasn't quite sure what it was they decided or why. I wish I could have had them talking about these three specific characters and some of the decisions they made. After all, this book was much more about humans relating to humans, with these three being at the crux of this story. In that sense, the alien part of the story was really just a plot technique and I'm not sure if it was really necessary. I still enjoyed the story, but it wasn't exactly unforgettable. This is a debut novel for the author, and this novel shows her promise as a writer. I look forward to seeing more by her. ...more

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