“I hate when people act like we can change our personalities, like it’s that easy to become something we’re not,” I said, thinking of all the times I’d been coaxed to be more social, more emotional, more outgoing. As if the personality I was born with was deficient, and if I simply put effort into it, I could be a better person - a person who didn’t resemble my true self.”

Gideon and Ishmael are brothers, but they couldn’t be more different.

Ishmael is outgoing, confident, popular and loved nothing better than a good prank.

Gideon is awkward, a total science nerd who loves nothing better than hanging out in his lab doing experiments and talking to his cat Kepler. He has emotions, but doesn’t understand why everyone thinks he should express those emotions all the time. His relationship with Owen is a secret because he believes that eventually Owen will find someone better than him and he’d rather not suffer a public breakup.

Gideon is determined that his future lies in attending MIT and then working as an engineer for NASA.

But one night he lets Ishmael help him with his latest experiment to test his seismometer and suddenly the rather small explosion he had planned turns into a rather sizeable one. And what starts off as small white lie to their parents that the sudden crater on their farm was actually caused my a meteor becomes national headlines when it is suggested that it was in fact aliens who created the crater and Ishmael and Gideon decide to run with it. Ishmael because it is the ultimate senior prank and Gideon as a sociology experiment to make his MIT application stand out.

Alien abductions, stolen cows, a would-be teenage cult leader (just to see is she could), a charismatic pyramid scheme leader and the ultimate hoax - there are many layers to this story.

But ultimately, it is the story of Gideon and his journey to understanding that being himself ifs enough and that even if the Universe is vast, that doesn’t make him insignificant.


Thanks to NetGalley and sourcebooksfire for an advanced copy to review.

Two brothers, science loving Gideon and fun loving Ishmael, have to think fast when a science experiment goes wrong and decide to blame it on aliens. For very different reasons they decide to see just how far they can take this story turned hoax. They just never expected it to take over their lives so thoroughly or test so many relationships. As people come from all over, believers, skeptics, and people who just want to look up and see more, Gideon quickly finds himself struggling with control.
***
This was an interesting concept. Told in a report style, complete with interviews, transcripts of conversations, articles, and more Gideon tells the story of what happened with the alien hoax he and his brother created. It is a goofy, hilarious story. Gideon is an awkward person that doesn’t really know how to handle human interaction (relatable) and keeps making a mess of things due to his inability to read social cues or having a handle on them in general. Gideon really starts to find himself though and step out of his comfort zone and learn there is more to the world than the tight parameters he’s set for himself, and doesn’t have to change who he is to come to these realizations. He doesn’t become magically extroverted but he puts himself out there a bit more to the people closest to him and gets a better handle on himself and I love it.
There are a lot of great things in this story, the different relationships Gideon has for example. His family, especially his brother, are a big part of his story throughout (I adore Maggie). His friends and his relationship with them changes and grows and reflect his own growth. His relationship with his boyfriend was interesting, we don’t see much of him, and a lot of that has to do with Gideon’s problem of how he perceives and internalizes things at the beginning, and his relationship with his boyfriend reflects a lot of his problems. Owen was incredibly patient and kind in handling things the way he did, it would have been very frustrating for him to be treated as he was.
***
Overall I enjoyed the book, it was slow going and incredibly ridiculous and strange and fun all in one.
***
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher I was able to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

What seems like the perfect prank for two teen brothers ends up taking over their lives. Aliens! Just the word strikes fear or curiosity into your heart but for two brothers it was a way to get out of trouble over a science experiment gone wrong. A light hearted story of a "War of the Worlds" lie that gets out of control and takes on a life of its own. Great fun for young adults and older middle school readers. My thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

I enjoyed every minute of this crazy, bizarre, hilarious book and the brothers who engineered this quirky town's biggest hoax.

Gideon, a science genius, and Ishmael, his Hawaiian shirt-wearing brother who prefers to coast through life, are polar opposites in almost every way and go into this hoax with different objectives.  Ishmael is looking to top his record for practical jokes at their high school.  Gideon, with a lifelong goal of working for NASA, visualizes it as a way to distinguish him from thousands of other applicants for MIT and ensure his acceptance.  Obviously, everything about this is a bad idea, but watching the story unfold and spiral out of control makes for such a pleasurable read.  

In the midst of all this, Gideon is also learning to navigate a relationship with his first boyfriend.  Being science-oriented, he prefers to deal in facts and rules, so personal relationships and the emotions and nuances that come with them are difficult for him to understand.  His character arc is strong, heartfelt, and one of my favorite things about this novel.  

As the description indicates, the narrative is broken up by interviews, blog posts, footnotes, etc., and while some readers felt them a distraction, I thought they worked well with the tone of the story.  Some of them also caused me to burst out laughing.  

Along with the hijinx, supposed alien abductions, a giant lava lamp, and a runaway cow named Muffin are incredibly supportive friendships, strong family bonds, and powerful life lessons on acceptance and self-worth.  If you're looking for a light-hearted, entertaining read, grab a copy of It Came From the Sky.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

IT CAME FROM THE SKY is by far one of my favorite reads of 2020. As we're wrapped up in a global pandemic and enduring political and social unrest, I found this book to be absolutely refreshing. It felt like turning on a contemporary version of Netflix's STRANGER THINGS in book form (only everything is fake!) and I was sucked in from the moment I started the book until I finished it. There was no political overtones, no ulterior agenda this book was trying to prove—it was simply a book about teens, a hoax that gets completely out of hand and the adventure that ensues.

After Gideon and his brother Ishmael accidentally set off a gigantic explosion that makes a giant crater, they claim that aliens were involved and the a hoax is born. As the days go by and the alien hoax starts to get out of his control, Gideon questions how far is too far without ruining everything he's worked for in his own personal life in pursuit of his own goals.

This book has aliens, LGBT representation, a likable protagonist, a thrilling and comedic storyline, the greatest footnotes, and important life lessons for teenagers and adults alike. It's a story about growing, about becoming, and having a laugh and doing sometimes ridiculous things all for the right reasons.

Give this book all of the awards—it totally deserves it. (Also @Netflix please make this into a movie because it's amazing.)

5/5 stars

In order to get out of trouble for a science experiment gone wrong, two teens convince their entire town that aliens have landed. Soon the hoax spins out of their control, and the brothers have just as hard a time as anyone else remembering that the aliens “came” because of them. Author Chelsea Sedoti treats her characters with humor and compassion in the funny YA novel It Came From the Sky.

Gideon Hofstadt has one simple rule for involving his older brother, Ishmael, in science experiments: not to involve him. Even at 16, Gideon is a serious scientist, and Ishmael is…not. He’s a goofball, more interested in enjoying his senior year of high school. It’s better not to let him help so that Gideon can conduct his experiments and work toward admission to MIT and his dream job at NASA.

Except Ishmael keeps badgering him to help with the one experiment that’s truly a two-person job. Gideon caves and lets Ishmael set the explosives around their family farm in Lansburg, Pennsylvania, so he can create literal waves on a seismograph in Ohio. Doing an experiment that will manifest on a scientific instrument hundreds of miles away makes Gideon so excited he doesn’t consider what could possibly go wrong.

And it does with a blast. Instead of a small explosion, Ishmael’s “help” craters the farm. As in, an actual crater is blown into the land. When their parents and the police arrive, Ishmael blurts out that aliens visited the farm. The news starts to spread like wildfire.

Before long people from across the region and then across the country start to trek to the site of the “alien landing.” Some totally believe the aliens were there; others are just curious about all the fuss. They’re coming to town in droves, though, and setting up camp, waiting for the aliens to come back.

One of these people is J. Quincy Oswald, the creator and CEO of a line of health products called myTality. Gideon can’t stand the guy, but his mother is enamored with the man. As a top distributor of the myTality product line, Gideon and Ishmael’s mother swears by the stuff.

Things really start to get weird when Oswald claims to have been visited and even abducted by aliens himself. Gideon doesn’t know what to make of it all at first, but he figures out soon enough that Oswald must be running a hoax of his own. The more he digs, the more he realizes that hoax might have darker implications. Now it’s a matter of who out-hoaxes who…that is, if Gideon can keep ignoring that little voice in the back of his head that urges him to give himself up and do the right thing.

Author Chelsea Sedoti builds a three-dimensional, relatable character in Gideon. His frustration with his brother is balanced by his affection for him. The two of them created the mess together, and even as Gideon’s discomfort with the hoax makes him hesitant to perpetuate it he can’t deny that Ishmael is right there with him every step of the way. The focus on the brothers’ relationship is refreshing and fun to watch.

Sedoti also gives Gideon a love interest and all the trappings of teenage love with it. Gideon views himself as a loser and doesn’t know why anyone would want to stay with him. As the hoax grows by leaps and bounds, so does his lack of confidence in his ability to keep his relationship intact. The juxtaposition Sedoti offers is an interesting one and true to life for the book’s target audience.

On the surface, the book’s premise might seem a touch incredulous but Sedoti backs up every single outlandish development with a real-life scenario just plausible enough to make it happen. While Sedoti might be faulted for making Gideon a little too much like characters from “The Big Bang Theory,” she still gets full marks for rounding out Gideon’s superior intellect with uncertainty. He’s a smart kid, but he’s also fully aware that even his most intelligent experiment is having consequences in a big way.

Readers who enjoy a fun book with a plot that blurs the lines of reality will certainly like this. I recommend they Bookmark It Came From the Sky.

This is the first book I have read by this author but won't be the last. It focuses on a lie that starts small but quickly grows out of hand when two brothers invent a story to cover up an experiment gone wrong. Definitely a fun story!

I struggled with this one... I really liked As You Wish and was very excited about this one. The blurb caught my eye straight away, and the beginning of the book held great promise. I loved that it quite literally started with a bang. I really liked the relationship between the brothers, and although Ishmael got on my nerves quickly, he was a great contrast to Gideon, whom I liked from the start. I found the boys' interpersonal relationships with their friends and peers - and Owen and Cass in particular - to be believable and feel well developed.

But I just didn't fall for the story...

After the initial roaring start, it felt like things were dragging on. Ishmael would do something , Gideon wouldn't like it, a new piece of the story would get crafted around that dislike. Leather, rinse, repeat. It started feeling draggy much earlier than I expected. I found the multi-format writing distracting - but that is a thing I often have trouble with, so this maybe on me more than the book, but I found that it felt disjointed rather than cohesive. And like so many other readers, I found the footnotes that were all over the place and the place holders for what I presume will be visuals distracting - I do know that this is an uncorrected review copy, but if a significant portion of the book is visuals that aren't included in that review copy, it's difficult to evaluate it in its entirety...

I think this one just was not for me - or at least not for me in an unfinished copy.

He was going to do a small explosion and see if his equipment he created would read it. He didn't anticipate his brother adding more fuel. It was no small explosion, it was huge!

Sourcebooks Fire and Net Galley let me read this book for review (thank you). It will be published August 1st.

At first the brothers created a story that a meteorite hit. Then the older brother got inventive and said he'd seen aliens. It took no time at all for that story to spread and for more people to say they had encounters with them, too. Soon the small town was inundated with tourists.

Then the head of a franchise came to town. He claimed to have been visited by the aliens and had a new product they told him to make that would make people live forever. The brothers knew it was not true, but how to stop him?

Then there was the cow one of the brothers stole that got away. This book is filled with silly things and young love.

As for the ending, the truth will come out. The fake franchise will end, the boys will be doing community service for a while, and life will go back normal. For a while anyway...

Great summer read! I enjoyed it all. It’s full of wonderful characters that you can truly relate to in real life. I enjoyed how the story moves along and that the reader anxiously waits. Really enjoyed it.

This story started with a bang... literally lol. The farm, plus the experiment that led to the focus on it, were really well done. I've got to say, that first chapter really took me in as the reader. Right from the get-go it sets up what's to come, with the craziness that will become "Is there truly life up there? Or, did the Hofstadt brothers go a little too far?".

Of course, as the reader, we know what's about to transpire. And, it's all kinds of crazy, funny, bizarre, and nerve-racking for days. I can see how it got that far, how Gideon went along with the story, and it made for that much more of an interesting story. I can't leave behind that brother of his though, Ishmael definitely has a way of making things blow up, literally and figuratively.

Not only do we get much of those feels from the first half, we also get it from the second half when things start to get really serious for both brothers. There is much that continues to unfold and become twisted the more further the story gets. This turns from one brother taking it too far, to the other brother keeping it from ending. And wow, he really keeps it going.

My only thing that didn't seem to work for me here, were all of the footnotes. They really didn't do much for me, or my enjoyment of the story. The interviews though, they really gave this story that little added feel that I couldn't get enough of. Yes Gideon, could become a bit disconnected, to engrossed in all of that, plus the experimental parts of it all, but it worked.

Very fun read, with a lot of growth, plus the understanding of what that kind of recklessness can bring to oneself. I couldn't stop laughing in some parts ( I mean really Oswald?? An alien elixir... only one of all the crazy antics that pop up in here), in other parts of this book I couldn't help but be anxious for the brothers (you know it's going to hit the fan). Really good read!

***I received this copy from Sourcebooks Fire, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.***

From the synopsis: "This is the absolutely true account of how Lansburg, Pennsylvania was invaded by aliens and the weeks of chaos that followed. There were sightings of UFOs, close encounters, and even abductions. There were believers, Truth Seekers, and, above all, people who looked to the sky and hoped for more. Only...there were no aliens."

This is the story of two brothers, who while performing an experiment with explosives, set off a chain reaction that builds throughout their small Pennsylvania town.
I loved Gideon. As a narrator p, he was reliable, smart, and obviously central to the story to keep us enthralled throughout the plot. I loved the introduction of the articles, online comments, texts, etc as incorporated into the story and the format of the book itself reading like a sociological paper was so different than other books I'd read I was hooked.

First and foremost, I was given this ARC from the publisher and NetGalley because I previously read Sedoti's "As You Wish" (which I also liked) so Sedoti is definitely an author I enjoy!

So, have you ever told a small lie and then watched it spot ridiculously out of control? Yes? No?

Well, that's exactly what happens in this book. Gideon, a self-renowned teen scientist who dreams of one day attending MIT and needs the resume to prove his worth, and his older brother, Ishmael, a goofy and mischievous teen without a whole lot of direction in his life, accidentally ignite a big explosion on their parents' farm that creates a gigantic crater. And rather than accepting the logical explanation -- that one boy was testing his homemade seismograph and the other boy just wanted to see a big BANG -- the townspeople of Lansburg, Pennsylvania assume the obvious about the creation of the crater: it was aliens. Yep, aliens from outerspace.

At first, Gideon wants to squash the rumor to bits but, driven by a desire to perform a social experiment to earn admittance to MIT, the two boys decide to continue forward with the ruse and test how far they can get with their hoax.

And, boy, does it get far. It attracts the attention of the media and immediately draws alien-seekers and believers to the area. Not only that, but suddenly several people come forward with stories of being abducted by aliens or seeing strange lights in the night sky. But, how? How is it possible when Gideon and Ishmael have literally made up the whole thing?

See, that's the question at the core of this story. As good-humored and funny as this is, Sedoti explores a valid phenomenon that occurs in our world. The idea of mob mentality or that pressure to believe what everyone else believes just to be a part of the majority because it's easier to be of the majori than the minority, right?

Sedoti formats this story as though it's straight from Gideon's case study. Chapters are often titled as "observation about ___" or "experiment" or "data from a witness." It's really cool. I wish the digital version allowed me to see the mixed media that she uses throughout the story. Unfortunately I couldn't see those but I'm sure it added to the story.

The voice she utilizes is unique and light-hearted and made me laugh at times as she explores this ridiculous, yet true, phenomenon.

I highly recommend this one!

This is a fun book set in rural America, but with a diverse set of teen characters. The premise is that two brothers cause an explosion after conducting a science experiment. To test people’s reactions to the possibility of life in outer space, they claim the explosion was really caused by extraterrestrials. It’s an engaging and fun story.

The sky is filled with many wonders and has fascinated the minds of many, but this time what it uncovers are some difficult to accept truths in the lives of those in a small town in Chelsea Sedoti's It Came From The Sky. 

A science experiment gone wrong sets off a series of strange events that grow continually more extraordinary such that the residents of Lansburg, Pennsylvania believe that aliens have visited their town. But Gideon Hofstadt knows the truth, because it was his experiment, which his brother Ishmael messed up that accidentally increased the impact of the otherwise carefully and scientifically planned explosion on their family farm, and Ishmael subsequently tried to shift the blame for the damage by claiming it was from extraterrestrial activity. When people in Lansburg, and from further away, seem to embrace this wild claim, the brothers continue to develop new elements of the hoax until it grows beyond their control.

A fun, entertaining, and, at times, wild read, the story moves quickly as it becomes increasingly more unreal, evolving and adding in new facets to the alien hoax that makes the narrative more convoluted. The characters were relatable and distinct, if not overly developed, and the analytical, overthinking mind of Gideon resonates for those who are very much INSIDE their heads while also demonstrating his character flaws, which allows room for him to grow once he acknowledges and confronts them. The ridiculousness of the scenario pulled me out of the story to question how and why the parents were allowing this to continue and I appreciated when the text briefly addressed that concern, otherwise the suspension of disbelief would have been a massive undertaking to maintain. The multiple formats used throughout the narrative included interviews, texts, blog posts, and articles, which was a nice method of breaking up the more traditional text and offer some different perspectives of the story's development. 

Overall, I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

A fun young-adult book about “asperger-ish” fifteen year old Gideon and his older Hawaiian-shirt-wearing brother Ishmael. Gideon is a nerd obsessed with science. He dreams of attending MIT and eventually working at NASA. Ishmael, on the other hand, is a cute, fun-loving goofball. When Gideon’s science experiment literally explodes and creates a crater in their neighbor’s farmland, what better way to get out of trouble than to blame an alien invasion?

I loved the characterizations in this book, and felt myself smile and even laugh out loud at some of the dialogue. Even more than humor, there were some good life lessons as Gideon learned to not only acknowledge his shortcomings, but also to find self-love and acceptance.

I think this would be a great read for middle and high school kids. Thanks NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

This is OK, not great. Maybe better for a YA. There's some clever writing and decent characters. This has some mixed reviews and I can see why since this is not a "middle of the road" story that will appeal to a broad audience. If you like YA fantasy this may be for you.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

DNF @ 10%
This book failed to grab my attention or my interest at all. I'm really not interested in any of the characters or the plot. A real let down, especially after Lizzie Lovett.

I was completely drawn in to this book because of the plot. How great is it? Small town story with two brothers who create an alien hoax? Yes please! It was fun, and the characters were all right. It got a little hard to get into, but I enjoyed it overall.

After Gideon's experiment goes bad. He and his brother have to cover their tracks and it turns into a funny, tangled mess. I loved the character of Gideon. There was great story development.