“Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest.”

This was a sad, strange novel that I enjoyed immensely.

“We may not get to choose how we die, but we can chose how we live. The universe may forget us, but it doesn’t matter. Because we are the ants, and we’ll keep marching on.”

Henry Denton’s boyfriend committed suicide last year — an act that Henry blames himself for, contributing to his own depression and anger. He pushed away his other best friend after it happened. Henry’s mother gave up her dream after his father left. His beloved grandmother is slowly losing her mind. And his big brother is an asshole. In addition to all this, Henry’s tormented at school for one pretty big oddity about his life — he routinely gets abducted by aliens. What no one knows is, the world is about to end, but Henry has the opportunity to save it. He just doesn’t know if he wants to.

The characters in this book seem very real, and they evolve slowly and wonderfully over time. Henry meets a new boy, but that doesn’t turn everything back to gold. His brother becomes less asshole-ish — but that doesn’t fix everything either. Hutchinson does a fantastic job demonstrating the after effects of suicide — what it does to a family, a loved one, a group of friends. The alien stuff is interesting — I loved the “end of the world” scenarios — but it’s really the network of people in this book that captivated me.