I’m stunned. Above All Else reaches above and beyond your typical young adult story. You can feel how passionate the author is about her characters and their journeys, and making sure her readers take away key lessons for their own. This journey from California to Everest was so detailed that I felt as if I lived it myself. It was full of challenges, heartbreak, and the types of trust and friendships one can only achieve in the lowest of low points. Which is odd considering this is about Everest, the highest point in the world! I just can’t explain how much I needed a read like this - it has me itching to find my own hobby or adventure that will test me to my limits.

Super interesting read. Drama on the side but a lot of cool climbing info, really gives you a feel for what it may be like to climb Mount Everest. I don't always love having two perspectives but both characters were equally good.

Who doesn’t have a goal that they set from childhood? Above All Else focuses on Rose and Tate’s big goal that they came up with when they were young- to climb Mount Everest! This gripping tale of childhood climbing friends will definitely make you feel like you’re right there with them!

Levy wrote this book with two points-of-views, one from Rose, and the other from Tate. Whilst Rose’s storyline generally progresses in the right then and there, Tate’s story flicks back and forth between the past and the present- giving some background for some very important points towards the back-end of the book. Personally, I loved how everything was intertwined and I wasn’t missing anything, which is always a great sign!

Rose is portrayed as the smart, headstrong girl who keeps on going when everything else is falling apart around her, especially as her mum suddenly falls ill and is unable to climb. Tate on the other hand feels very much in the shadows of his family and of Rose, often comparing himself with Rose schoolwise. The contrast between our two characters definitely helped with reading their storylines a lot, as they weren’t the same.

In the story, I loved how the focus was on friends (old and new), health (both physical and mental), as well as touching sensitively on death throughout the book. I also love how all the characters strive in their different ways in order to make climbing Mount Everest happen in the first place- and when they finally arrive at Everest Base Camp, I truly smiled.

As Rose and Tate developed whilst climbing, I did love how there was a little bit of romance, but that wasn’t the biggest part of the story at all, as if the most important thing to both was their friendship and climbing. I also did love the angst that happened at points, especially when Rose and Tate had different views on certain issues, and I thought it was excellent to see that in this read rather than just having nothing but sunshine-and-rainbows.

The description of how gruelling climbing is (whether it be Everest or just the local mountain range) was super intense, and at times made me feel like I was climbing- even though I’m certainly no climber myself! Levy described Everest in such a way that made me even so scared to climb the stairs in my house, just in case I fell because I let go of the railings! I love how Rose and Tate both overcome the challenges they face within themselves and with their new-found friends from the trek.

I did like how there was diversity, with mental health problems, family issues, and physical ailments, and how these were described in enough detail that made me feel like I was right there, dealing with everything alongside everyone in the book. Heck, I even cried at some points because the feels hit me so much towards the end of the book!

Overall, this was a gripping tale with triumphs and losses, and a lot of feels! I was always rooting for Rose and Tate, and this book is definitely something for those who are adventurous or want a different type of contemporary read!

Rating: 4/5
(This review will go live on my blog on September 29th!)

I really wanted to have enjoyed this book, but I did not connect with the writting style nor with the characters, not really.
The premise of the book is beautiful though. I might read it again in the future int he hopes my opinion changes

I think I love the idea of this story more than the story itself. I am absolutely fascinated by all things Mt. Everest and, although I would never ever attempt to climb it, I always try to get my hands on any story that talks about people who do.

I also love that this is a YA story. I honestly don't know many teens who are driven and prepared enough to undergo such a dangerous and intense expedition, so it's really interesting to read about their motivation and desire to climb the mountain.

And although I love the topic of the story with my entire heart, there's just something about this that's missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm not sure if it's the pacing (slow with a slightly rushed ending) or if it's the writing (feels a bit basic), but there's just something stopping me from obsessing over this.

Overall, I think it's a great concept - definitely unique and one that I haven’t read before!

Thank you Netgalley for an advanced read of this book.

There were parts of this book that I found to be exciting and thrilling but for most of the book I was frustrated. I felt like there was a lot of repetition and circling around topics with no real resolution. I guess that is the angst in a book but it was not done well in this book. In fact, it was really frustrating. I felt like a lot of things were pushed that were not necessary to the story. The premise that two teens have been friends all of their lives and have been in training for climbing Mt Everest, awesome! Sounds like an exciting read for sure. However, there was no tension in the relationship that led up to them suddenly "hooking" up one night. I just never really felt that the relationship went beyond friendship, the romantic part did not feel realistic to me. I felt like other kinds of relationships were just thrown in as a politically correct filler but really had no substance and I really hate that in books. Also, it is hard for me to believe that the tension between Tate and his Dad was over something so small. It built up in the book and in the end when they finally resolved it, it didn't feel like there was a reason for that much tension to begin with. I guess it all comes down to communication but it just didn't play out well. Overall, I appreciate the book and the research that went into writing a book about Mt. Everest. That was fun. It was repetitive and drawn out in some ways but a great topic. I just felt the character development and the relationships were not done very well.

Tate and Rose, two teens that have been friends since childhood embark on the opportunity of a lifetime - summiting Mount Everest. As they confront their untold feelings for each other and the difficult situations they left at home, they are faced with life-and-death challenges to overcome on the mountain.

From the writing itself, to the very odd and inconsistency in the characters and the narration, this one just didn't hit for me. Maybe Jon Krakauer ruined all adventure narrative for me.

The beginning dragged and I didn't connect with either Rose or Tate. Their relationship was predictable and not very nuanced and ultimately this story just didn't quite make the emotional cues it tried to. Perhaps this is a novel for a reader seeking to read a hard-hitting contemporary that doesn't care too much for the plot.

*** 4.5 Stars ***
Talk about a novel that discusses resilience and strength!!!
I’ve always been so interested in Mt. Everest and how the weather and even the height of the mountain is so dangerous and yet, even knowing about the risks, people still attempt the climb!!!
This novel was a page turner because I knew that such a novel could not have a happy ending, you have to make it realistic.
But the ending was more than I expected and I am so glad...it was definitely sad, but it was so good at the same time.
If you can handle an intense, happy and distressing book, I would recommend this!!! But it’s a novel involving a deadly mountain...you’ve been warned!!!

*Thanks to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Above All Else was a really cool story that made me want to do more research about Mount Everest and the expeditions to the summit. The book was really well researched and thought out. I was really able to understand the pressure the characters were going through and the ambition that they experienced in different aspects and areas of their lives.

The plot was steady, like a climb, which is really appropriate considering the plot and subject of the novel.

This book really captured my interest. Above All Else is a cool take from a mountain climbers’ perspectives. It made it even more down to earth for these climbers to be young and struggle through other things.

The characters were very understandable, and the book had a really good and realistic plot and ending. I also got to learn more about what Everest expeditions are really like! The characters were really well developed, and it was portrayed as a good and okay thing for them to follow certain paths for certain reasons, which I thought was a really cool approach (no pun intended).

I would recommend this for those who like a quick read with an adventure and realistic happenings and circumstances. I enjoyed it quite a bit. In all, I like how this book was written, and I would recommend it to young adults who are in for a taste of adventure and peril, and who are also up for family, friend, and romantic relationships growing amongst that.

With the ultimate goal in sight, summiting Mount Everest, Rose and Tate are not at the top of their game, Navigating the challenges of a burgeoning romance, a parent's illness and disappointing expectations as well as their high-throttle lives have Rose and Tate making some bad calls leading to some worse situations.
The setting was brilliant and riveting but I was never truly engaged with the main characters to care about how the story ended.

I received this free ARC for my honest review from Netgalley. The first half of the book was a bit slow for me. Though I learned so much about hiking and Nepal. I think that’s what bore me a bit. It was too descriptive of the hiking trails and the side effects of hiking Mt Everest. I liked the characters of Tate and Rose. I thought they were too young to climb Mt. Everest but then again I’m not knowledgeable about hiking it. I wanted more about them in the end. And I was definitely rooting for them in the book. I would recommend this book.

How far are you willing to go for your dreams?

That’s the question Rose Keller and Tate Russo face in Above All Else, a story built on the premise about climbing Mount Everest but really serves as an exploration of love, adventure and what you’re willing to risk to achieve your goals.

Rose and Tate are seniors in high school – best friends, climbing partners and polar opposites – having prepared for the climb up Everest for what seems like their entire lives. Their friendship is easily one of the best things to root for in this story, even if the initial perspective switch and exposition in the beginning took some getting used to.

They each have full lives and strong parental figures – a feature that’s to be commended in YA fiction, their relationship with each of their parents being a key focus of their growth and development throughout the story (with Tate’s dad being an active part of the climb itself). However for as fun and believable as their friendship was, there’s a sharp turn towards romance that while isn’t completely unexpected – especially for the genre – it feels incredibly rushed, moving from zero to one hundred in a way that I would have liked to have seen more buildup.

The true focus of this story is the climb itself, a fact that’s so evident from the amount of care and research that the author poured into exploring the nuances of climbing Mount Everest and what it means for the people and the communities there. yet for as much detail that’s given for the climb, there’s very little touched on severe psychological issues that I would also have appreciated to have more time for the characters to explore.

Nevertheless, once the climb has begun – I felt just like our characters, unable and unwilling to stop. The last third of the book was gripping and intense, enough that once I started reading I couldn’t stop. Pushing through the towards the end was absolutely worth it, making me feel just like our characters did towards the end.

Despite a slow start and clunky exposition, Above All Else serves as a great reminder that sometimes the greatest challenges to our dreams can be overcoming the mountains we set up for ourselves.

This was a fairly enjoyable book. The exposition was quite extensive, which, as a result, took me a long time to get through. I'm the kind of person who likes to get straight to the action, but I do appreciate the author's desire to provide background information so readers can better understand the characters and plot. Overall, I liked the story and by the end of it, I really felt a connection with the characters. I found the writing somewhat bland at times, but that's mainly due to personal preference. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this review copy!

A book on two teenagers embarking on a trip of their lifetimes to climb to the top of the highest mountain on earth, Mount Everest. If this doesn't sound like an action and suspense packed novel to you, then I have no idea what will. And this book delivered!

I loved learning so much about the mountain and the surrounding area and people so much, and really got an insight on how it is to actually climb a mountain and what it takes. I must admit, whilst reading I myself got the idea of maybe starting to climb as a hobby, we'll see how that will go :) Anyway, the characters were beautifully described and relatable. Their actions were all explained and reasonable and the characters really grew on me.

As I am a huge fan of character development, this book was such a treasure trove for me! All of this character development - WOW! The author really did something with these characters, and I really enjoyed reading their characters widen their horizons and develop. I also really enjoyed all of the topics that were covered, such as PTSD and mental illnesses as well as feminism, even though I could have done without Yoon Su always having to be so feministic and having to scold and lecture everyone. It also just felt kind of forced into the story, as it was just said but then that was that. But that's what I always think of these kind of "feministic" passages in books, just not my thing. I just cannot really control my cringe when i read them.


*SPOILER ALERT RIGHT HERE SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO GET SPOILED*

Last but not least I really really really found the relationship between Rose and Tate unnecessary. I was looking forward to a book about friendship and adventure, but this was just another romance novel, like every other. A couple of months ago I read a book in which there were no romantic interests, which only then made me realize how there is always some kind of romance in every novel out there. Having read that book purely about friendship had been so refreshing and beautiful, which is why I had hoped it for this one too. The world just needs way more novels solely about friendship and not romance. And a book about a boy and girl who are best friends but for once don't fall for each other? Would have loved that!

*SPOILERS OVER*


All in all this was a beautiful, realistic and very heartfelt novel, which taught me a lot about Mount Everest itself, as well as a insight on how it is to climb up there and what it takes. I really liked the characters, how the book was built up and how well it was written, so it was really easy to read and fast paced. The only thing I didn't like was the romance aspect of the novel, as I would have preferred a friendship motive, which would make the book a whole lot better in my eyes.

But if you are looking for an action-packed book that might want to make you start a new hobby as well as teach you something about the tallest mountain on planet earth, I really do recommend you this one.

I got about 25% into this and realised I wasn't paying attention anymore. It felt incredibly long and slow paced, a lot of atmospheric descriptions that were great at first but I grew bored of.
The characterisation felt a little off and I couldn't really put my finger on what else was going wrong with this book for me. I just lost interest so quickly.

I would still recommend people read this because it could just be me, I liked the concept a lot and feel it has huge potential. It seems very popular, but it wasn't for me. I didn't click with this book.

I do think maybe the way the ARC is layed out hasn't helped with the rating either, some words were separated mid-way, chapters were meshed together and I found the huge blocks hard to read sometimes.

Love. Love. Loved!

Like a lot of other reviews I've seen of this book, I found the beginning of Above All Else quite hard-going. The characters didn't immediately leap out at me, and I can't really say I have an interest, or any knowledge about mountain climbing, so at one point I almost wrote it off as 'not for me'. However, I persevered to around 100 pages and BAM, it really came into its own!

At the heart of this book is a really cute romance between two best friends and climbing buddies, who are embarking on the feat of all feats - summitting Everest. Both Rose and Tate are fighting their own demons (from sick or absent family members to PTSD), and their shift from best friends to bf/gf takes them both by surprise and takes some getting used to, but they're adorable!

I ended up actually really enjoying reading about Everest and all that's involved in climbing it. It was interesting to see it as a commercial tourist trap with all the base camps and facilities needed. I knew nothing of the Sherpas or any of the social economics surrounding the mountain and its impact on the Nepalese which is what made this more than just a teen romance story.

It did solidify one thing I already knew though - you must be mad to try it! What a selfish thing to do for just one moment of glory.

Young love, hard work, perseverance, and heartbreak all in one. I found myself rooting for these two in more ways than one. Climbing Mount Everest seems like a fairytale, a joke, not even possible - and they did it! And broke my heart along the way!

I love the plot to this book, two teenagers climbing Mount Everest sounds so interesting. I've seen many Everest documentaries, my old dog was named after the first Sherpa to climb Everest (Tenzing). The accuracy of this book with the mountaineering details is amazing, you can seriously tell the author did their research.

I will say it started out very slow and was somewhat hard to get into to. It took awhile before I could connect with any of the characters, but the plot kept me going. Tate and Rosie at times felt very stiff to me and it wasn't till the end that I could connect with them.

The last 35% of the book is honestly so good and I'd really recommend this book just for that last 35%. There's so much depth to it, the author makes you feel like you're right there on Everest with Rosie and the crew. The author dives into the emotional toll that comes with finally being able to stop being who everyone else wants you to be. She also explores the true emotional trauma of doing something as huge as climbing Everest.

Overall I really enjoyed this book it made me miss climbing, but I'm not going up Everest anytime soon. It did help me decide to start planning a trip to Mount Rainier soon. Honestly isn't that all you could ask for in a book? For it to effect your life outside of the reading world and make you a different person. All in all this was a very interesting YA book that wasn't like all the others in the genre.

Above All Else by Dana Alison Levy is a book that definitely exceeded my expectations for it when I started reading it. This is a story about two best friends attempting to climb Mount Everest, but the further I got along in this book, the more I realised that it's about much more than climbing the highest, and most dangerous, mountain in the world.

As the story progresses, the reader learns more and more about our main characters and best friends, Tate and Rose. And as they slowly climb Everest, both their relationship and their personalities grow. I truly wasn't sure if I was going to like this story, or where it was headed, when I read the first half. I'm very happy to say that I was proven wrong.

Of course, the things I didn't like about the first three quarters of this book still stand: some of the dialogue and writing felt quite dry (especially at the beginning), how some characters seemed a little too much like caricatures and how some scenes seemed to jump from one thing to another.

But the last part of this book was truly something else. The story evolved to something much deeper, which gave the characters more dept as well. Some parts were truly heart wrenching and so well written that I cried, which is definitely not something I expected to happen when reading this book.

So yes, this book was filled with YA tropes I didn't always like or felt like were executed well, but it's also very real and it hurts. I started caring for all of the characters in this book and I was sad when it was over. I truly felt like I went on an amazing and terrifying adventure with these characters and it ended up being a great experience.

Lastly, I'd like to say how much I appreciate the research and effort that went into making this book. I would never, ever want to even attempt something close to climbing Mount Everest, but reading about it filled me with excitement and awe. So props to Levy for giving me a story about an experience I haven't read about before and working very hard to make it an inclusive and educational experience.

I was lucky enough to get a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

*This review will contain mild spoilers.*

Above All Else tells the story of two teenage climbing prodigies Rose and Tate as then begin the incredibly dangerous summit of Mount Everest. They've spent years preparing for this moment, training all over the world to fulfil the dream of conquering the world's tallest mountain. However things aren't going as smoothly as they prepared for, with Rose's mother's illness, Tate's struggles to live up to his father's expectations and the evergrowing relationship between the two, and in an environment where any wrong move could be your last they have one hell of a journey.

When I first heard about this one I knew I'd enjoy it, I love the whole idea of a romance forming during a (potential) survival situation. When I first read the description on NetGalley I thought they would be left alone to survive after something goes horribly wrong. So I was so pleased when I was accepted for the ARC, I rarely get accepted on NetGalley and this was my second once within about 2 days, so I was pretty happy.

The format was a little confusing at first, the breaks between paragraphs were big at times making feel like a time jump was coming, and then others there was nothing. But I did get used to it as I carried on.

Reading about rock climbing made me want to try the hobby, I have tried it in the past without ropes but after a friend took a nasty fall I was put off for a while. But reading about it made me long to accomplish something, I know I'll never be good enough to even think about Everest, but potentially a small mountain in England I could consider... eventually.

I liked the friendship between Tate and Rose, but I felt like there wasn't a lot of it, so when it did move to a romance it seemed sudden and didn't flow as well as it could have. Although we know they have been friends for years from the writing alone I think it would have been difficult to see the depth of friendship they did have. So when the "I love yous" came out, again it was almost forced just to add to the romance element.

I felt as though Tate's portrayal of PTSD and the responses of those around him was very good. I know at first his father came across as pushy, especially since Tate had been seeing a counsellor, you would have imagined that his father would have been more understanding, as there were some signs at least that his son wasn't doing as well as he was showing. But I did feel they developed as characters when the conversation was had in regards to Tate's true feelings.

I liked how his feelings were accepted and although others were disappointed in his unwillingness to climb, they accepted and didn't try to push him to continue.

I really enjoyed the story overall, I felt it was detailed and showed us both the true horrors and wonders of engaging in such a dangerous activity.