A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021)
From the "author to watch" (Kirkus Reviews) of The Five Stages of
Andrew Brawley comes a brand-new novel about a teenage boy who must
decide whether or not the world is worth saving.
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then
the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and
all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Only he isn't sure he wants to.
After all, life hasn't been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling
waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother
is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is
slowly losing herself to Alzheimer's. And Henry is still dealing with
the grief of his boyfriend's suicide last year.
Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.
But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and
logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his
perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the
brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing
the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate
choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it...or let
the world--and his pain--be destroyed forever.