WHEN THE SKY FELL ON SPLENDOR BY EMILY HENRY // spoiler-free book review: this YA sci-fi (sorta) is extremely weird but oh so good and to the haters pls close the door behind you

I really do suck at consistency, and here’s my formal apology for the 1000th time, but cross your fingers and toes I can get back into the swing of things and on a schedule because I want to be back SO BAD!

Anyways, this review is long overdue, and this time not because it’s been sitting in drafts, but instead because I FINALLY READ THIS BOOK!!!! So let’s get into it, and I will be yelling at all you haters today #sorrynotsorry

Title: When The Sky Fell On Splendor
Author: Emily Henry
Page count: 384
Date published: 12 March 2019
Genre: Young adult science fiction

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Synopsis:

Almost everyone in the small town of Splendor, Ohio, was affected when the local steel mill exploded. If you weren’t a casualty of the accident yourself, chances are a loved one was. That’s the case for seventeen-year-old Franny, who, five years after the explosion, still has to stand by and do nothing as her brother lies in a coma.

In the wake of the tragedy, Franny found solace in a group of friends whose experiences mirrored her own. The group calls themselves The Ordinary, and they spend their free time investigating local ghost stories and legends, filming their exploits for their small following of YouTube fans. It’s silly, it’s fun, and it keeps them from dwelling on the sadness that surrounds them.

Until one evening, when the strange and dangerous thing they film isn’t fiction–it’s a bright light, something massive hurtling toward them from the sky. And when it crashes and the teens go to investigate…everything changes.

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Big thanks to Penguin Random House SA for the review copy! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

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STAR RATING: (5 out of 5 stars)

The reading gods are smiling down at me for FINALLY reading this book. PRH may not be so I need to do a lot to get back in their good books. Can I start by telling you all how great this book is?

Also I have a funny story (ha reference intended). Would you be surprised to learn that I was on Season 5 of The X-Files as I wrote this review? Please do laugh at the fact that I got into the show organically and only saw the front cover blurb AFTER finishing the book.

We all know Emily Henry can write anything, and I’ll be obsessed, and this book was no exception. Though probably the lowest-ranked of her books for me, I still loved how out of pocket this book was. She was like I wanna write something different and it was everything.

But this book is quite literally something you would see on the show. The entire plot makes no sense, it can’t be explained, nobody has a solution, and in all honestly will you ever learn what truly happened? So, calling all X-Files fans, you’ll love this one!

I’m not going to pretend I came up with this, but instead give credit where credit is due to another reviewer. They explain that this book cannot be be classified as either sci-fi, action, magical realism, or anything, making this its strength and its weakness. That being said, EH writes the extraordinary into the ordinary, which is why we love her so much. And I think that’s a great way to describe this book.

Seeing as it took like a bajillion years to read this book, I decided to take it on holiday with me, and my kryptonite is being able to wholly leave whatever space I’m in and be transported into the pages of a book. And here, I went to a strange American town with a group of kids with such a lovely friendship dynamic and weird stuff happens to them.

I don’t kid when I say the friend group is hodge-podge, these teens have next to nothing in common, but hey, let ’em team up and solve a mystery. Are you shocked that I enjoyed this book so much? I suppose it’s where the ordinary and extraordinary meet. I just fell in love with the whole group, and controversially, I like a big group of characters. I said what I said.

Moment for me to love Fran because she’s too lovely for this earth (pun intended)

So, overall, I’d say my mission was accomplished. This book gave everything that I needed it to give. She might not be your cup of tea, but if anything I described sounds like your vibe, please give this forgotten book a chance. She’s a lot of fun *insert heart eyes*

 “How many billions of things had to happen just right to give me this ordinary life.”

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“There were still pieces of us we so badly wished each other could see and yet couldn’t make ourselves ask for, and there was anger and resentment and it still all hurt, but right now, we were here, and if we stayed long enough, things might start to heal, even a little bit.”

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“But maybe sometimes things do happen for a reason too. In the gaps between all that. Maybe the world tries to repair itself, to heal or just, like, adapt.”

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“There are things about black holes that break all the rules—or expand them in a way we don’t understand yet. As if the universe wants to exist so badly it makes loopholes in its own rules. I find it comforting, like this is all meant to be somehow, and nothing can take any of it away. Like everything is forever.”

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“Sometimes the anger was too much. Sometimes I thought that if you peeled back my skin, that would be all that was there: a burning red hate for this world and what it did to people callously, every second, every day.”

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“The six of us were destined to be alone, trapped in a grief we weren’t willing or able to share, but from then on, at least we were alone together.”

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“Just kids. Kids, pretending to be okay in a world that wasn’t.”

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“I cried, because I was afraid, and because I was heartbroken, and because of all the kids like us, who’d lost the chance to feel safe in their smallness.”

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HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK? WHAT DID YOU THINK? WHO WAS YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTER? WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE EMHEN BOOK? I’D LOVE TO KNOW!