It’s been ages since I’ve been able to sit down and actually enjoy a book outside of class, and I am so glad that the time I set aside was for a book as good as this one.
“We Have Reached the End of Our Show,” originally published on Sept. 30 and written by first-time author and “Starkid” actress Ali Gordon, is a beautifully written exploration of humanity and love, all wrapped up with an impending apocalypse.
The book follows the story of two lovers, Josie and Gabe, as well as Gabe’s younger and more chic cousin Lisi, as they pile into a car together for a cross-country road trip with less than a month before an asteroid destroys the earth. It has a unique format sprinkled with appropriate timeskips and a thrilling ending well worth the little over 200-page journey. It was so worth it, that I binged the whole thing in around six hours.
As someone who generally finds myself leaning away from the apocalypse genre, this was a welcome step out of my comfort zone. Gordon does an excellent job of putting the focus on the characters within the story instead of the asteroid itself, so much so that it’s easy to forget that the characters the audience is already attached to won’t make it to the end, no matter what. It takes an extraordinary amount of character building to keep interest in a story when the ending is already decided from the first chapter, and yet my attention didn’t waver for a moment.
The representation within the characters is also done in such a respectful and realistic way that I believe a lot of relationships lack in recent media. Josie and Gabe are a gay couple with genuine character flaws. Josie struggles to open himself up while Gabe’s newest life change forces him to rebuild his once boisterous ego as someone who now needs to rely on those around him.
It’s not only the LGBTQ+ representation that’s done well, though, but the representation of someone with a chronic disease as well. Gabe is never presented as a weak person throughout his character arc. It can be so easy to take a character and allow them to be ravaged by the worst parts of themselves, and yet it’s clear Gordon cares far too much about these characters to allow that to happen.
The third main character, Lisi, may seem to be a random addition to the crew at first, but she’s anything but. Even with her dramatic outbursts, Lisi is a brilliant addition to an already strong set of characters. She’s a dynamic outsider to what seems to be an unbreakable relationship, a refreshing perspective both on the impending doom we’re meant to feel, but also on the progression of Gabe’s sickness from someone who’s not his lover.
I enjoyed the format of the book as well. The well-timed glimpses into the pasts of all three characters, on top of the ticking down of days every other chapter, proved to be an effective page-turning strategy, every page either being another thing to love about the protagonists or another thing to dread knowing they’ll soon meet their end.
I especially liked how immersed I felt in the environments, even with so little time spent at each location. The descriptions of places like the Grand Canyon or drunken crowds in Las Vegas really put me into the same world-loving perspective as the characters I read about, an opportunity to think about how beautiful the world is that, in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, I end up rarely thinking about.
We have now reached the end of my review as I struggle to find words to describe how much it means to see so much beautifully written representation in one story already filled to the brim with character development and deep-rooted sadness. “We Have Reached the End of Our Show” is a worthwhile read for anyone willing to give it a try, and I sincerely hope they do.
