Review: We are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson

There are a few things Henry Denton knows, and a few things he doesn’t.

Henry knows that his mom is struggling to keep the family together, and coping by chain-smoking cigarettes. He knows that his older brother is a college dropout with a pregnant girlfriend. He knows that he is slowly losing his grandmother to Alzheimer’s. And he knows that his boyfriend committed suicide last year.

What Henry doesn’t know is why the aliens chose to abduct him when he was thirteen, and he doesn’t know why they continue to steal him from his bed and take him aboard their ship. He doesn’t know why the world is going to end or why the aliens have offered him the opportunity to avert the impending disaster by pressing a big red button.

But they have. And they’ve only given him 144 days to make up his mind.

The question is whether Henry thinks the world is worth saving. That is, until he meets Diego Vega, an artist with a secret past who forces Henry to question his beliefs, his place in the universe, and whether any of it really matters. But before Henry can save the world, he’s got to figure out how to save himself, and the aliens haven’t given him a button for that.

My Review: 4 Stars

While they are also very different books, this book was in a way reminiscent to More Happy Than Not, which is a compliment since I really like that book.  Both the books were contemporary with a slight twist and they have MCs who are gay boys.  Also, they both don't shy away from having parts that are brutal.  I really liked this book.  It was interesting with the part about the end of the world, and not knowing if it was actually real or not.

Henry was a really great main character.  I grew to love him a lot over the course of the story.  He was bullied at school and it could be tough.  While Henry was gay, the majority of the bullying to did not seem to be directly homophobic.  In fact, the fact that Henry was gay seemed very matter-of-fact and not a big deal.  Instead, the bullying seemed to be because his brother had told the school about Henry's encounters with aliens, so the kids made fun of him and called him "Space Boy."  A lot of times the bullying was through words, but there was also a physical violent assault that was not good to read about at all.

One of his main bullies is Marcus and I very much did not like Marcus.  The strangest thing about Marcus was that he and Henry had a enemies with benefits kind of relationship, and he was still such a jerk.  Then sometimes he would act nice and sincere, and I never really knew which was the real Marcus.  But by the end, I knew I definitely disliked him.

Diego and Audrey were both characters that I liked.  Diego had just come to Henry's school.  He and Henry pretty quickly became friends, and Henry developed feelings for him, and I won't say whether or not they were reciprocated.  Audrey was friends with Jesse, who was Henry's boyfriend and committed suicide, and she also was friends with Henry because of Jesse.  She and Henry had kind of stopped being friends after Jesse's suicide but they became friends again in this book.  

Henry's brother Charlie was an interesting character.  He was basically a jerk at the beginning of the book but he grew and matured a lot over the course of the book, especially when he got his girlfriend pregnant and decided he really wanted to be a dad.

If you like YA contemporary, read this book.

Katie