Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - We Are the Ants

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

24 reviews

lilcurious's review against another edition

2.5

Very sad gay teenagers. Heartwarming despite everything. Badly integrated anecdotes from a future/parallel reality. Overall forgettable. (Check TWs, some heavy stuff)

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acesiever's review

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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gbeanie's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective

Strong character development? Yes

4.0

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veskumelooni's review

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challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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louisallama's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

In theory this sounds like the kind of book I'd eat right up but unfortunately it wasn't. My two main issues are that I didn't connect with the characters, and that I wasn't satisfied with the way the book handled the world ending in 144 days. This book was by no means bad, it just wasn't for me.
I think I found it very hard to connect with Henry is because the book felt quite juvenile. Usually I'm fine with YA but for whatever reason it really didn't work for me this time. I'm not sure why but I was just completely uninvested in Henry's life and emotions. He has multiple very big and real problems that are poinient even to adults, and yet he never got past feeling like a whiny teenager to me.
The other problem is that there are a whole slew of deep, existential questions that could come of finding out that aliens have given you the choice to stop the world from ending in 144 days and this book explores basically none of them. I understand that it was more used as a vehicle for Henry deciding whether he wanted to live, without the trauma of making an actively suicidal main character for the whole book, but he ends up being very blasé about it. The closest we got to Henry asking these questions of himself, was him asking the extremely obvious, "am I going to push the button" throughout the book, as well as asking every character what they would do if they knew the world was going to end but they could stop it, both of which are resolved every time within a paragraph or two. I would think that this is something that I would agonise over, especially if I wasn't fully swayed one direction or the other. And while Henry's life truly is a steaming pile of garbage, linking this back with not feeling connected to him, I never actually felt like he was suicidal at any point, or ever had any conviction to press or not press the button.

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