We Are the Ants

I love this book because gay teen Henry keeps getting abducted by aliens. He’s trying to have a normal life as a high school student in Florida, but people think he’s a flake because he keeps going missing when the aliens take him.

The aliens give him a button to push if he wants to save the world from getting destroyed. Henry’s classmates f*ck around with him so much I wanted him to find something to give him hope not to destroy the world. His new boyfriend seems to be helping, but during a visit, Henry is taken by aliens… show more.

This is a YA novel, but it deals with adult themes like suicide, crumbling families, and mortality. 

It’s also drop-dead funny, with a smartass, teenage narrator you’ll alternately want to hug or slap silly. He believes he’s been abducted by aliens and given the choice of either saving the world or destroying it, and he only has a few months to decide. I love the witty dialog and the genuine, complex relationships, but what especially drew me to this story is the love story between the narrator and his new boyfriend. 

I wish I’d had a book like this to… show more.

This was a book I actually put off reading for a long time precisely because I knew it would destroy me. It centers around a science fiction allegory for depression that the main character, Henry, must navigate alongside his grief over losing his boyfriend to suicide a year before. Every character is multi-layered and complicated in such a realistically flawed way; there wasn’t anyone who didn’t have something going on or their own demons to face, which I absolutely loved. I read this book after going through one of the worst depressive periods of my life, when I couldn’t think… show more.