A review by blogginboutbooks
When the World Turned Upside Down by K. Ibura

3.0

Everyone experienced the recent pandemic in different ways, dealing with different challenges, fears, frustrations, anxieties, etc. WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN seeks to capture what we all endured by highlighting four kids living in a variety of situations. Their stories touch on things like job loss, parental depression, the exhaustion of medical professionals, tension caused by families being stuck at home together, kids having to take on more adult roles, friends and family members becoming ill, etc. While these all help to illustrate what living through the pandemic was like, I feel like the story as a whole is missing that special something that would have really brought it all to life for the reader. The four kids at the center of the book are all sympathetic and likable (although it's more because of their desire to do good than because of their personalitites), although none of them really stand out. I didn't feel particularly connected to any of them. Since none of them really has a story goal, the novel feels episodic and unfocused. The whole police brutality theme feels added on, even heavy-handed. In a lot of places, it feels like Ibura is juggling too many themes. Other portions of the story just confused me. Although the ages of the characters are never given, the members of the Quartet act young, way too young to be allowed to go to the grocery store by themselves or canvass the halls of their apartment building unsupervised—especially in the middle of a pandemic and with George Floyd riots going on to boot. It doesn't make any sense to me that they were allowed to roam freely, but then got in trouble for being places they shouldn't have been. There are also some plot strings that are left dangling (What happened to Mrs. Connor? Was she ever reunited with Daisy? Did Ai ever forgive Shayla?). While I do think WHEN THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN teaches some great lessons about helping people, using your voice to enact change, working together, and easing your own anxieties by getting outside of yourself, there are a number of things about the book that bugged. It also just kind of bored me, to be honest. In the end, then, this was only an average read for me.