Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves science and math, and she turns to science and math concepts to comfort her when she learns that an asteroid is headed for earth. Kemi's loving extended family surrounds her, even as they, too, struggle with facing the end of the world, and cope in different ways, all together in Kemi's aunt's house. Kemi decides to create a time capsule to preserve the most important things, and she gathers items from everyone in her family, but her dad can't come up with the one thing that represents what he loves best.

*Spoiler alert*

About three quarters of the way through the book, a giant twist is revealed: the "end of the world" isn't an asteroid that's going to obliterate humanity, but to Kemi, it feels that way: the countdown of days and hours that has served as the book's structure is actually a countdown to her dad's funeral. Mr. Carter was shot in the family's home by a neighbor/intruder who claimed to think it was his house, but had a year-long history of aggression toward the Carter family, who are Black and recently moved into a mostly-white neighborhood.

Newbery contender 2024?

Back matter includes resources for victims of hate crimes, and anti-racism resources.

Quotes

My favorite type of science is the science of probability. Probability is pretty great because it tells you how likely something is to happen or not happen. It is a way of predicting the world. (2)

...Grandma put her love into things she made....It was almost like she thought love should be useful. (35)

But there had to be a way to make everyone feel less afraid of the end of the world. (37)

I liked the idea of things that lasted longer than the people who made them. (90)

Something didn't stop belonging to you just because you shared it with other people. (91)

"You can feel two things at once, you know," Dad continued. "You can feel brave but afraid. You can feel happy but sad." (127)

"I think you are made up of all the people and things you love." (128)

Dad always said that sometimes when people feel scared, they get angry. (146)

Since then, I started to think of the probability of everything, the different possibilities and then how likely they were to happen, and it always helped me feel less afraid. (167-168)

The fact that everyone I loved had woken up today didn't mean that they would wake up tomorrow....
Statistics told us what could or would probably happen in life but they never told us what definitely would. (188)

The end of something - even a human, even a planet - is just a change. (220)

"I will always be with you." He pats my chest. "In here."
"I want you out here!" I say, gesturing around the room. "...I want you here. In my heart is not good enough." (289)

"You're strong. And you're brave. And I know you'll miss me, but your life isn't over. It's not the end of the world." (292) ( )

Kemi is an aspiring scientist whose life is turned upside down when she learns that there is an 84.7% chance that the world will end in 4 days due to an asteroid on course with Earth. She and her family go to her aunt's house to be together. Kemi decides that a great way to spend her time is to make a time capsule for those in the future to understand her family. She works with her cousins to find something special from each person. Here mom is on bedrest, her dad (her favorite person in the world) seems ill, and all the while time counts down. At some point the book takes a turn and BAM, everything changes.
A compelling, emotionally read. ( )

I won’t say too much about this one for fear of spoilers.

Loved Kemi and her family.

Some patience may be required earlier on, it’s sort of a slow build, but once the emotion hits, it really hits.

When you get to that point where the emotions hits, you start reconsidering everything that came before it, so I think this is one of those books that would lend itself well to a reread as you’ll be experiencing all those moments differently the second go round. ( )

First sentence: We first noticed the asteroid because my little sister, Lo, kept trying to eat it. It was a Sunday morning in April, and the three of us--me, Mom, and Dad--were sitting at the dining table, discussing a news story Dad was reading on his tablet.

My thoughts (preview): This book has mostly five and four star reviews on GoodReads. Clearly many people have read it and enjoyed it. BUT. I was not one of those. One of the reasons why I personally did not enjoy this one--not even a little bit--is that it is all switch and bait. In other words, Kemi Carter, the protagonist, is a completely unreliable narrator. Readers can take nothing--absolutely nothing--at face value. I don't like being gaslighted for 80 to 90% of the novel. Some readers may be like WOW the author really fooled us, how clever! Not me. I'm like, where's the book that was promised?!?!

Premise/plot: The framework of the book is that this "book" is a letter written to be found in the future--either by humans who survived the asteroid OR aliens? OR another species that evolves out of the atoms? Something like that. It is written directly to the reader.

From the prologue, "Dear Reader, If you are reading this, then chances are that our world has ended. I don't know what that makes you? . . . All that matters is that you've found this. All that matters is that you now know we existed."

Kemi Carter loves, loves, loves science and math. She's supposedly, supposedly all about the facts. (Except for when she isn't, apparently).

Most of the novel is her "preparing" for the end of the world by creating a time capsule to be buried before the asteroid strikes earth.

My thoughts (conclusion): Perhaps some readers don't mind being tricked. But other readers may. Or at the very, very least I mind. Every reader has his/her own way of choosing what to read next. They make decisions based on jacket copy, descriptions, book cover, sample excerpt (like from Amazon), or even other reviews. When most--if not all--lead the reader to certain conclusions, it seems tricky to have the actual-actual book be about something completely different. Not only are you not getting what you wanted to read, you're getting something that you may very well NOT want to read. In fact, for those that tend to overthink (hint: me again): perhaps that's why the trickery exists in the first place. To get more people to read your book than otherwise would have because of the subject matter being what it is.

As I said at the start, I am definitely in the minority here. Most people seem to think this one is wonderful, brilliant, clever, etc. ( )