An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

I don't read YA but this is Hank Green's debut and there are few humans I do not know personally but adore as much as the Green brothers. My conclusion is that this is a very valuable and essential book for the genre (and indeed all genres): with personal insight and tons of wisdom Hank addresses the nature and power of the social internet, it's potential, the difficult reality of social media fame, and so much more. A very contemporary book, firmly grounded in the (western) young adult world of online communities and living, a world largely ignored by fiction but unmissable in real life. The former really baffles me but Hank, as he does so often, took care to lead the way. Thank you ♥️

-Also YES HANK, you do have a beautiful book cover. If you are a nerdfighter you will recognise a lot of Hank in the pages of the book.
-(I don't want to refer to how engaging the language or the plot was, I'm not a YA reader anyway and it's not the point I'm trying to make.)

DNF'd

I read 30% of the book and just wasn't feeling the characters, plot, conflict, etc... I love Hank Green this book just wasn't for me.

April May is your typical 20-something just trying to get through life as painlessly as possible despite working a job that is about as exciting as Wonder Bread™. She lives with her girlfriend, Maya, in New York City and her life is pretty, well, average. That is, until Carl and his merry band of other-Carls appear in cities all over the world. April May being the millennial child of the internet does what any of us would more than likely do in this day in age: wake up her best friend, Andy, and film a YouTube video “interviewing” Carl. What starts out as a silly 15-minutes of fame moment spirals into something larger than April May could have ever imagined. When the Backstreet Boys spoke of being “Larger than Life,” they had nothing on New York Carl, and April May is suddenly thrown into the limelight, forced center-stage, into the world of secrecy, backstabbing, and horrid PR-agents. And to top it all off, she has to find out what the Carls want as the safety of the world might depend on it.

I will start off saying that I really enjoyed this book. I liked the voice of the characters and the writing style and found it really easy to get into and stay into it. The story is told in a retrospective way as if April May is telling you the story herself of what happened with the Carls and her life, like she was actually in the room talking with you. I think that's why I liked the book so much; she felt real. She made horrid decisions and there were parts of the book where I kind of hated her for the things that she did. However, that is also why I loved her as a character. In real life, we can love someone but hate what they do, or find someone irritating and hate them for one reason but love them for another. She wasn't wholeheartedly black nor white; she was... April May.

I'm looking forward to the second book and I recommend this one for anyone wanting a weird kinda alien sci-fi read. And maybe if I ever meet Hank Green I can ask him the question that has been plaguing me since finishing the book: Why Arby's???

While the main character was annoying, she also felt real and did illogical and dumb things that a real human would do. Can't knock that. I loved the message of this book and plays out a hypothesis that I've had: Aliens or some force outside of our planet will be the only thing to unite us. Even in the book it barely worked. :/

I love the Green brothers, so I'm maybe biased with my 4 stars. I really enjoyed it, though!

April was an interesting character but I love anything with Robots, aliens and pop culture clues. I really enjoyed this quick listen.

3.5 ⭐️ rounded up - rly enjoyed the story & it kept getting stronger throughout, i found the protagonist april to be annoying sometimes but given the circumstances it is realistic & very human for her to be annoying ! social media & online attention are weird

the writing was distracting at some points & felt a little wordy, & im by no means an editor but there were some editing mistakes that were distracting as well but overall very fun story, solid commentary about social media, the state of the world, hive mind mentality, etc etc

3.75

i liked this alot!!!!!! i loved the funny and quirky writting, it felt very real and easy to consume. i also like the message behind the whole story and the cliffhanger!!!!! i will for sure read the second book :) + bonus points for wlw relationship and pretty nice bi rep

So although I have only given this book a two star rating there were a lot of elements I enjoyed about the book. I thought the concept behind the novel was fascinating - imagine strolling home and finding a gigantic statue that seemed to have appeared in a blink of an eye. Then to hear that identical statues were dotted all over the world at exactly the same time. This hooked me immediately.

April, the main character then rushes to document it uploading a video to social media, this element I found quite believable. The novel continued in this way with lots of social media references, the mystery surrounding the statues and looking at how April's personal life changes as her fame increases.

I found the writing style too colloquial and began to lose interest in the novel. To me it felt more of a YA book.
Although I was still fascinated with the Carls (the statues) I got bored with the ‘Dream' and the opposing side to April's followers.

I am glad I persevered with the novel as the ending was fitting and left you with a real cliffhanger which I really enjoyed. I'm not sure I will be reading the second book in the series but I appreciate the opportunity to read this book and would recommend it a younger audience than myself and anyone who enjoys mysteries and YouTube reality stars.

“I don't think I actually felt any of those ways, but it seemed on-brand.” This book actually is a remarkable thing. Remarkably horrible, in fact. Or maybe it's the generation gap – at least if we're not talking about biological age because Green is just about four years younger than me. This “Thing” deals with the appearance of aliens in every major city on earth and a young adult woman, April May (seriously?), who becomes an Internet celebrity for dealing with the implications of this “visit”. I chose the initial quote because everything in this book is pretty much superficial and only deals very shallowly with all the possible implications of physical confirmation of the existence of intelligent life beyond Earth. (Well, intelligence is relative – as anyone reading to the end will find out when “Carl” utters a single simple word as “judgement” on mankind.) The entire book is basically Hank Green trying to build upon his clout as an Internet celebrity (at least I guess he is; I've never heard of him) and tries to stay “on-brand” just like his not-very-likeable heroine. Oh, and April May is, of course, bisexual. Now, don't get me wrong: That's perfectly fine with me (hey, I am, too!) but the way Green writes her makes it very obvious that April is just bisexual because Hank thinks it's “trendy” and “modern”. She's a tool on many levels... April is terrified of intimacy, nevertheless often lonely, insecure, neurotic and egotistical (traits many of which she most likely shares with the majority of the nerd-ish target audience). In short, she's a mess. A mess with Thoughts, though: “We're going to skip around the timeline of the story a bit here, but I have now been on the news a lot, and I have Thoughts.” Yes, brilliant, the audience is oftentimes directly addressed which I find almost as HIGHLY ANNOYING AS THE SHOUTING (in net-speak) which occurs often. I actually hate it when literary figures address me as the reader. Do not break the fourth wall unless you have a really good reason for that or the writing talent that Green very obviously lacks. What he lacks in talent, he tries to make up for in preaching liberal ideas: “But in those manic moments when I thought I could be some kind of vessel for truth, I'd thought about what I'd say if I someday got a soapbox. That income inequality is out of hand. That all people are pretty damn similar so it would be great if we stopped hating each other. That prison sentences for nonviolent crimes are dumb and that drug addiction is a health problem, not a crime problem.” Yes, Hank, I agree with all your points and so probably does about 95% of intelligent mankind with me. Even for an Internet celebrity “stop hating each other” is a bit on the intellectually “thin” side, though, eh? The entire book seems solely written to build upon Green's status and to appeal to his “Nerdfighteria” (read: fanboys and –girls) from the “millennials” generation. Parts of the book are probably meant as (self-)criticism or reflection on this Pavlovian reflex to jump on pretty much any bandwagon that (seems to) remotely make sense, no matter what the consequences: “Of course, I was pulling this all straight out of my ass. I didn't know if the Carls were dangerous or if my mind was being controlled. Who cared as long as my made-up shit wasn't as poisonous as Peter Petrawicki's made-up shit. In the end, my brand was me, so whatever I said became something I believed.” Ultimately, though, this will more likely work self-affirmatively – after all, the “Nerdfighteria” are just sitting behind their keyboards and surfing the net; it's not like they'd ever act like that “IRL” (in real life). Even when Green tries to do more than scratch on the surface of things, he doesn't get beyond a single sentence at best before falling back into his comfort zone of writing with the philosophical depth of fortune cookies: “I'm honestly worried, because I think we're just starting to get used to the impact that the social internet is having on us culturally and emotionally and socially.” Green caters to his audience so much that he even includes verbatim tweets of dubious value to the story, transcripts of interviews and, most annoying, lists, e. g. “Here are a list of thoughts I had in the space of five seconds”. I could forgive all that stuff if only Green had some talent for writing and something resembling style in between lists and tweets but it only gets to this level: “I reached under my shirt to feel my own skin, warm and soft and as fragile as air.” “Fragile as air”? Her skin? What kind of comparison is that? Have you ever managed to break air? Let's see how a competent author handles a very similar feeling her heroine experiences: “I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me.” (From: “[b:Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine 31434883 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1493724347s/31434883.jpg 47327681]”, by [a:Gail Honeyman 14558709 Gail Honeyman https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1475252960p2/14558709.jpg]) That makes much more sense. All that mess basically boils down to one simple truth that seems to apply to both creation and creator: “I was really, deeply, honestly, and truly infatuated with having people pay attention to me.” Don't get me started on the ending, by the way; it's the coup de grâce for the entire book. So, if you're a teenager up to a twenty-something (and daft to boot), you might enjoy this thing. If you're above the age of 40, find a real book. Anyone in between should proceed with caution.P.S.: If you intend to include senseless, meaningless gore in your book for no reason but to cater to violence freaks, at least have the decency to just write it. Or, better even, just leave it out because, honestly, if you're aware you should warn your readers, it's a pretty good indicator you're doing it wrongly: “This chapter is going to contain some graphic violence. I will tell you when it's coming. I will not be offended if you skip it.”

Celebrity, fame, mob-mentality, the cult of personality, and fear—both rational and irrational—and the power of teamwork/crowd-source/open-source . . . all wrapped up in a story of friendship, love, and a bit of sci-fi. Hank Green weaves a breezy, but tightly plotted, page-turner of a tale.

This is just an observation: It did take me a bit to get used to the first-person past narrative. And he quite often broke the fourth wall. Ok, what am I saying, I never really got used to that; it reads like a long blog-post in a sense. It's not a point of view that is natural to me for a novel, but . . . it's a style.

Regardless, it's a great story and a fun read that will make you think.

That cliffhanger of an ending tho