I received an arc of this title from NetGalley for an honest review. I honest dnf this book. The characters are all so self-centered and egotistical that I could not stand her.

This is a book that I can't wait to put in my classroom library.

Ummmm...don't hate me because I don't like the protagonist of this book, okay? I mean, I actively disliked her throughout the book. Because I am supposed to, I suppose. Which means, BRAVO! to you Ms. Sher! In the face of all of the efforts and loveliness of those around her, Lenny persists, almost to the bitter bitter end, in staying in that supremely unlike-able place. Anything else would have been unrealistic and also would have made me mad at the author. I can deal with the necessary reality of a character that I don't like, but I cannot deal with the pretty-ing up of that character to fit some trope or expectation of YA happiness.

Ultimately, I really ended up enjoying this book and looking forward to its resolutions. I loved the ending, as it allows me to create my picture of the future of these characters and relationships and continue to live with them beyond the book.

I dug it. ☺

All the Ways the World Can End by Abigail Sher is often difficult and heartbreaking to read. It is the story of a girl who seems to be on the path to self-destruction while her father struggles to live. Throughout the book there are moments of humor which help make it easier to read. Eleanor and her family use humor to alleviate their feelings of grief and sense of hopelessness.
Overall, the characters are believable and relatable. I like this book and will recommend it even though at times it felt uncomfortable to read about Eleanor's behavior and her attempts to cope.

The narrator's immaturity is what dropped my rating. Otherwise, the characters and vivid and memorable, and the writing is excellent.. Full review on Goodreadas.

I really enjoyed this book. The characters are very realistically portrayed and people who have dealt with loss can truly relate to the main character and how she is handling things. This is an excellent, therapeutic read.

Lenny's world has just come crashing down around her. Her dad's cancer isn't getting better- it's actually getting much worse. Her workaholic mother has become totally checked out emotionally, and her sister is away at college. This leaves Lenny struggling to oversee her dad's medical care on her own while juggling her own self imposed teenaged drama.

All the Ways the World Can End is a poignant story that will make you consider your own mortality, if only momentarily. For you see, long before her dad's diagnosis, Lenny was already obsessed with the array of cataclysmic events that could one day bring the Earth to its knees. A stickler for facts and research she has a theory for every scenario. Add to the mix her OCD and the fact that she's watching her father die slowly tips Lenny's obsessions into overdrive causing her to have to stop and evaluate her life.

I have to say I didn't have any idea what to expect from this book, but I'm happy I gave it a chance. All the characters, each with their own quirks; strengths; and weaknesses, drew me in to their stories. Even Lenny's teenage angst was written in such a way that I didn't find it obnoxious. Most of all, however, Lenny's connection to her dad felt so powerfully written that it kind of broke me a little.

Thanks to Ms Sher, the publisher, and NetGalley for giving me this review opportunity.

I was very hopeful for this one as I'm a huge fan of all things end of the world, so I thought it would provide a nice little motif for what seemed like relatively standard YA story. Unfortunately this one didn't really work from me. The action moves along quickly enough, but Eleanor despite all the terrible things she has to deal with, never really turns into a character that I could root for, and none of the characters ever really felt authentic. I could see myself putting this in the hands of a few readers at my library who are particularly voracious, but overall nothing particularly memorable here.

My brother-in-law and father both died of cancer within two years of each other. At some point shortly after both of those events, my sister and I took my nephew to see the movie "Up." Not a great idea, since someone dies, OF CANCER, in the first ten minutes of the film. Needless to say, we were both complete wrecks, and decided afterward that there needs to be an alternative rating system for movies that includes a rating of "C" for cancer.

There's no spoiler in saying that this book needs to have that "C" rating. Actually, it doesn't need that kind of warning at all, since official synopses of the book say straight up that the narrator Eleanor's dad is dying of colon cancer. As if that weren't enough, her best friend, Julian, is getting ready to move from upstate New York to San Francisco to attend a prestigious dance school, Eleanor's sister is away at college, and Eleanor's OCD leads her to engage in some pretty self-destructive behaviors.

As heartbreaking as all of that sounds (and it is), there's some humor here, as well. Eleanor and Julian are both involved in an improvisational performance-art production at school, whose flaky director conceives of it as a mini-"Vagina Monologues" show focused on the life and loves of Georgia O'Keefe. It's as weird and disastrous as it sounds.

And one of the ways Eleanor copes with her stress is by reading up on, as the title tells us, "all the ways the world can end," which are also (usually) presented in a sarcastic, funny manner. Eleanor's obsession with end-of-the world scenarios aligns this book with Shaun David Hutchinson's _We Are the Ants_, whose protagonist also imagines a range of apocalyptic scenarios.

But I find Nora a far more sympathetic character. Maybe too sympathetic for me, personally: my mother had cancer my senior year of high school (she recovered and is still kicking 30+ years later, thank god), so I was completely empathetic when Nora talked about how she kept super-busy and avoided going home so as not to have to "go home and act like everything was fine or manageable...to go home and just wait for something to get better. Or worse."

Unsurprisingly, this strategy doesn't work for the long haul, and as her father gets more ill, Nora gets more desperate and acts in increasingly bizarre ways. Her unraveling is believable, but disturbing--some young readers might find Nora's head too uncomfortable a place to be. Although even in Nora's most chaotic moments, author Abby Sher manages to inject some humor. For example, Nora's pursuit of her father's oncologist is equal parts mortifying and hilarious; even Nora knows Dr. Ganesh must see her as "the troublesome daughter with misplaced outrage, chronic halitosis, and obsessive-compulsive, continuously annoying idiosyncrasies with a dollop of Electra complex on top."

None of this ends well. But Sher does manage to bring a very sad story to a touching and optimistic end. And _All the Ways the World Can End_ handles the magnitude of grief in a far more realistic way than, say, Carol Weston's recent _Speed of Life_. This is a tearjerker, for sure, and again, some young readers might not like the emotional intensity. I don't know if I'd teach it in my YA literature class, but I will definitely recommend it to students who enjoy writers like John Green but who also want that kind of story with a female narrator.

Lenny is struggling to get through everyday life; her father is dying, her sister has run away to college and her mother is pretending nothing has changed by working longer hours. When she gets the bare minimum from her father's younger doctor, Lenny thinks he is into her and begins to act, well to sum it up inappropriately, to deal with everything else that is going on in her life.
A heavy read that had me laughing, cringing, and almost crying in parts.

Funny. Sad. Relatable. Unbelievable. This book covers all this and more. And then it goes back and repeats.

Lenny has a lot going on in her life. A LOT. Her dad is dying from cancer, mom is a busy attorney who uses her job to escape that harsh reality, and sister Emma is away at college. That leaves Lenny to deal with the day to day stuff. Still, she's in denial about how sick her dad actually is. She copes by keeping a list of all the different ways there are for the world to end. Oh and her crush on one of her dad's doctors.

I went back and forth on how much I enjoyed this book, alternating between liking it very much and just liking it. It's good, heartbreakingly so at times. But there are some underlying issues I didn't feel good about. Lenny's behavior at times borders on mentally unstable. Understandable with all she's dealing with but still. And her obsession with the doctor is over the top. Nevertheless it's a good read, a realistic picture of life and dealing with death.

Heartbreaking, in a good way. Some parts made me uncomfortable, and were hard to read, but that's kind of like life. I liked how the book deals with the hard issue of dealing with the inevitability and fear around death. That sounds morbid, but I just mean that I appreciate the fact that the book doesn't skirt the hard stuff...