Nowhere on Earth | Book Review

Thank you to Knopf Books for Young Readers for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

 Book: Nowhere on Earth by Nick Lake
Release Date: May 26th 2020
Tags:  Science-Fiction | Young Adult | Family | Aliens | Alaska
Trigger/Content Warnings:  Shooting at Children

Sixteen-year-old Emily is on the run. Between her parents and the trouble she’s recently gotten into at school, she has more than enough reason to get away. But when she finds a little boy named Aidan wandering in the woods, she knows she needs to help him find his way home. But getting home is no easy matter, especially when Emily finds out that Aidan isn’t even from Earth. When their plane crashes into the side of a snowy mountain, it’s up to Emily to ensure Aidan and their pilot, Bob, make it off the mountain alive. Pursued by government forces who want to capture Aidan, the unlikely team of three trek across the freezing landscape, learning more about each other, and about life, than they ever thought possible.

While Nowhere on Earth is a sci-fi story, at its core it is a story of self-discovery in a difficult situation for a young girl.

Emily has gotten into some trouble at school and when she meets Aidan, an alien, she finds she has more reasons to run away. Emily finds herself along the way. Pretty basic and for the most part it is. There are elements that didn’t quite work out for me and others did.

How she didn’t tell her parents what actually happened at school. She had such a skewed idea of her own parents, as if they didn’t care for her at all. Yet a lot of their actions were because of caring, including when they appeared in the middle of this story. That is one of the elements that I did really enjoy. A young adult story where the parents are present and where they work things out.

I think my main problem was that I just couldn’t really get into Emily as a character to like. Aidan, the alien, didn’t really work his cute charm on me either. I did like Bob the further we got into the story however. He gave a more realistic feeling to the whole situation as he didn’t just take it at face value.

All in all not a book that worked for me entirely. However I think if you can like Emily this might be a book that might resonate with you a lot more.