HOW TO PACK FOR THE END OF THE WORLD

Teens prepare themselves for catastrophes.

High school sophomore Amina, half-Israeli and all Jewish, has had nightmares ever since someone threw a Molotov cocktail through her synagogue’s window. Now a scholarship student at an upscale boarding school, Amina finds solace in a new group of friends and the Eucalyptus Society, a club in which they take turns creating competitive challenges focused on building knowledge and skills that will help them survive when the world inevitably ends. This unbalanced novel offers great potential: a minor mystery, budding romance, complicated friendships, and the all-too-believable premise that today’s teens have fears about the future that extend far beyond college and career choices. But the way Amina’s first-person narration unfolds makes events feel recapped, diluting their impact for readers. Frequent overt exposition and more attention to academic, financial, and social stresses than to the plot-driving challenges result in a pace much like that of a pre–climate change glacier. The final chapters, which include more focus on the mystery, bring a sense of genuine emotional investment for Amina as well as readers and give some dimension to Amina’s somewhat diverse friend group, whose complex familial situations often stand in for character development. Timely to a fault, the veiled but obvious references to current politics may age badly.

Squandered potential.