Review: I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi

“The thing about the end of the world was this: either everything mattered, or nothing did.”

Release Date: October 22nd 2019

Genre(s): Young adult, contemporary, science fiction, LGBT

Pages: 420

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Synopsis

It is rumored that after another planet makes contact with Earth that the world will end in seven days. For Jesse Hewitt, one bad blow after another leaves him indifferent if things were to end now. But for Cate Collins, she wants to use the time to learn about the father she’s never met. And for Adeem Khan, he can’t forgive his sister for leaving. And with only seven days left, these three people are brought together.

Review

To be completely honest, my main draw towards I Hope You Get This Message were the binary numbers embossed into the hardcover. And the nerd in me translated those numbers, and guess what? They translate into an actual message!

Nerdiness aside, my favorite aspect of this book were little technical tidbits like that. You have this greater plot of contact with aliens and how they plan to wipe out humanity in seven days, and for the most part, all of the science and tech talk in this book are factual, while also being accessible to everyone. And a lot of that dialogue has to do with theory that’s been discussed in the sciences, and I knew from that that the author has passion in the field as well. In the book we intermittently read about the aliens discussing whether or not to spare humankind, and there’s a discussion in there about how reckless human consumption of natural resources has been, as well as our intelligence and life outlook compared to other species. I found this fascinating because this exact scenario is what’s covered in real-world concerns about either first contact or what happens when A.I. inevitably succeed us in intelligence.

This is probably the first review that I’ve written without really discussing the plot or character elements this far into it, but what I can say from this that if you’re into these subjects like me, then you’ll probably enjoy this book too. As someone that often wishes for more content like this in books, I love the way these little themes were slipped in and I was completely engrossed in those parts.

I also really liked the characters’ stories and how they came together. While I do think most of their character development was from their backstories rather than their personalities, I really appreciated reading about their diverse stories and what they sought to find over the course of the seven days. The synopsis implies that the three come together in some way, but it wasn’t how I expected it to be, so I was really happy about that.

I found that the impending doom scenario in this book was covered in some places better than others. You can definitely tell by the settings and the surrounding characters that the world around them is crumbling with the total loss of infrastructure and how people were responding to the alien announcement. However, you don’t really get this as much with the main characters. There’s so much focus on their goals that they don’t really stop to think over the fact that the world may or may not be ending in days. Natrually denial can be a part of this, but I don’t think it was intentionally expressed like that here. I would have loved some scenes where the characters really thought about this and went through their emotions a bit.

The ending was also very abrupt, in an unexpected way. I don’t want to speak too much to the ending here but it felt like there were supposed to be a few more pages at the end.

But all that aside, I still really enjoyed I Hope You Get This Message. I thought it was a really cool crossover of contemporary and sci-fi, but I also think a big part of my enjoyment had to do with some of the messages the author included in the book. That being said, I can see why some people might not have liked this book as much. Regardless, I really liked these characters’ stories and I definitely think that it’s worth a read.