Gina Rae Mitchell

How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff | Review | Author Interview | Book Blog Tour | Giveaway!

Book Blog Tour from iReadBookTours

Thank you to the author, Harper Collins Publishing, and Lauren from iReadBookTours for providing me the information for this tour. I received a copy of the book for the tour. The following review is my honest, unbiased opinion.

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at the bottom of this review. 

How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff
Published by HarperTeen on 11/10/2020
Genres: Family Life, Fiction, Friendship, Literary Fiction, Young Adult
Format: Audiobook, eBook, Hardcover
Pages: 320

The Breakfast Club meets We Are the Ants in this timely story for a generation of young activists.
If you knew the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you do?

This is the question that haunts Amina as she watches new and horrible stories of discord and crisis flash across the news every day.

But when she starts at prestigious Gardner Academy, Amina finds a group of like-minded peers to join forces with—fast friends who dedicate their year to learning survival skills from each other, before it’s too late.

Still, as their prepper knowledge multiplies, so do their regular high school problems, from relationship drama to family issues to friend blow-ups.

Juggling the two parts of their lives forces Amina to ask another vital question: Is it worth living in the hypothetical future if it’s at the expense of your actual present?

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Source: iRead Book Tours, Received from the author or publisher for review.

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My thoughts on How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff

How to Pack for the End of the World is an interesting tale of teens at a private school. They come together to form a group of “preppers” planning for the end of the world as we know it. They use elaborate games to help them along the way. When someone begins to play devious pranks on each person, the typical high school drama and angst makes its presence known.

When you mix the jock, the nerd, a social influencer, and a girl traumatized by a fire at her former Jewish school, the story is bound to be diverse and entertaining.

I enjoyed the mystery of this tale. It does rely on the trope of misunderstandings between the characters, but that is true to form for this age group.

The pacing felt off in a few spots, but I know reading books like this during a pandemic certainly plays into my concentration.

Overall, I believe young adults will relate to the characters and situations and should find this story to their liking.

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How to Pack for the End of the World by Michelle Falkoff

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Author Interview:

1. What inspired you to write for young adults?

I didn’t start out planning to write for young adults; I thought I was writing adult literary fiction, and then I realized most of my characters were teenagers. I’ve always been fascinated by books set in schools of all kinds, as well as that in-between space of young adulthood, where we’re living at home with our parents and all these constraints while at the same time feeling like we’ve already grown up. It’s an incredibly complicated time, and it makes for a lot of interesting complexity, writing-wise.

2. Do you have a writing routine?

I sometimes do, and I wish I did now! I’ve got a day job that keeps me pretty busy, so I have to grab writing time when I can. Under optimal circumstances, I like to write for a few hours in the morning until I hit a certain goal—when I’m drafting that might be a word count, and when I’m in revision it might be a chapter, for example. But I’ve found it helps to be flexible, so sometimes I’ll write at night, or just on the weekends. It’s comforting to know that everyone’s routines can be really different, as long as we figure out what works for us.

3. What are some of your writing rituals? Do you write in silence or with noise? Coffee or tea? Longhand or computer?

I enjoy writing in silence, though when I’m far enough into a project that I can almost hear the characters talking I can manage in a coffee shop with some background noise. I envy people who can write to music, though! I find music wonderfully distracting. I’m a coffee drinker and a quick typist, so my days of writing longhand are over, I’m afraid.

4. Do you have a favorite character from your new book?

I do, and I wish I didn’t because it seems so unfair—I really do love them all. My narrator, Amina, is the character most like me that I’ve ever written, and so for that reason, she’s definitely not my favorite. If I absolutely had to pick, it would have to be Jo—she’s the character with the most complicated backstory, the character who’s the most secretive, the one who in many ways was the hardest to write because there was so much about her I had to figure out. But I’ve always enjoyed getting to know difficult people, so I guess it’s not so surprising that I’d come to love her the most.

5. What are your hobbies when you’re not writing?

I love games of all kinds! I love playing poker and doing crossword puzzles, and I’ve recently become completely obsessed with the New York Times Spelling Bee.

6. Is there anything else you can tell us about your book?

Don’t be fooled by the title! The book is about a group of teens who are obsessed with the end of the world and come together to help each other prepare, but I promise there will be no apocalypse within these pages. Instead, the group has to learn how to survive the lives they’re living now, in the less-apocalyptic world that’s happening around them. It’s about personal relationships and how we treat one another, not just how we address the big picture of everything that’s happening in the world.

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Buy the Book Here:

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Giveaway:​

Autographed copy of HOW TO PACK FOR THE END OF THE WORLD, swag, and $50 Amazon Gift Card. (USA only) (ends Nov 30)

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More tour posts I’ve done with iReadBookTours:

The Puppy Baby Book by Dawn Greenfield Ireland

Alexa’s a Spy by Dorothy Rosby

I also share many of my reviews on the following websites:

Lovely Audiobook’s Monthly Link-up (Not limited to audiobooks)

The Inspire Me Monday Link Party

Inspire Me Monday with Anita Ojeda

Grammy’s Grid Unlimited Monthly Link Party