Let’s Call It a Doomsday is a contemporary YA written by Katie Henry and released as her sophomore novel in August of 2019, which, in pandemic terms, was actually like fourteen years ago, so it seems like it’s been out for a while, and yet it only recently surfaced on my radar.
As soon as I saw the simplistic bright yellow cover sporting a stylized soup can, my interest was piqued, and with a title like Let’s Call It a Doomsday, how could I not look it up? This novel follows Ellis, a teenager saddled with crippling anxiety regarding the impending end of the world. Ellis doesn’t know how it will happen or when it will happen, but she is increasingly convinced that it will happen, and it will happen during her lifetime. And she intends to be prepared. She entrenches herself in doomsday prepper forums and while other girls her age spend their money on makeup or concert tickets, she instead spends hers on emergency preparedness supplies and stashes of food and water.
Her prep, however, extends beyond good natured concern for her family’s well being in the event of an earthquake or a flood, and instead takes the form of invasive thoughts and crippling anxiety, taking over her life and making it difficult to function “normally”. And then one day, in the office of her therapist who she sees to help her with the issues, she runs into a young, hippie-esque girl named Hannah.
Hannah is convinced she is destined to know Ellis, and she tells Ellis she knows how the world is going to end—and it’s coming soon. The two teens team up to interpret Hannah’s visions and tackle the unknown, but the journey takes Ellis to places she never thought she’d go, and ends up introducing her to a whole slew of new experiences far outside the realm of just prepping for the inevitable worst case scenario.
When I first grabbed this book (and of course I mean virtually grabbed, in my online cart, because physical bookstores aren’t even a thing right now. Those poor, sad books just collecting dust on the shelves with no one to wander around and pull them down and sit in the comfy chairs flipping through them…), I actually didn’t even realize it was YA. Which is neither here nor there, but perhaps speaks to the overall appeal of the book that I didn’t even really care. I just heard doomsday prepping and crippling anxiety and I was like where is the guest list for this? Sign me up. I’m in. And I did read the blurb, so perhaps that should have told me it was YA, and I also should have been tipped off by which particular bookstagram and YouTube accounts I saw sharing it most often, and yet still I went in blind, and was kind of pleasantly surprised to see that we have a YA novel tackling these sorts of topics. Doomsday novels are nothing new—we aren’t, of course, reinventing the wheel here—but this particular rendition of a doomsday novel is something new, for quite a few reasons.
To begin with, it’s not strictly a prepper novel. Yes, Ellis really does believe the world is going to end in a short amount of time, and she really does want to be prepared for it. But rather than being about the actual technicalities of surviving a post-apocalyptic world, this novel delves into the anxieties and implications surrounding such a scenario. Staying warm, taking shelter, finding food…but also what we would lose out on. What we haven’t done yet in life that we wanted to. What we have been hiding from when we wish we’d been braver. The experiences we want to have, but would lose the opportunity to do so. The feelings we haven’t even gotten a chance to explore yet. Those parts of the mind, in my opinion, take a much more real look at doomsday anxieties, and dig into an untapped part of the fear that is talked about much less than “How would we function if society completely breaks down?”
But don’t get me wrong—I actually am interested in the more literal aspects, as well. I don’t fault Ellis one bit for being a prepper, and I actually like that she explained that her religion makes her a little more pre-disposed to focus on being prepared for a disaster, something that potentially feeds her anxieties to some extent. But I enjoyed seeing Ellis talk about how she would tackle different scenarios or what she’s learned about survival during her explorations of the prepping topic.
It bears mentioning, of course, that although Katie Henry would have had absolutely no way of knowing this, this novel hits a little bit harder right now with everything currently happening in the world, and the way that it often feels like things are spinning more and more out of our grasp of control, forcing us to tackle some of these very issues (issues that some of us might never have anticipated coming across in our lifetime—but Ellis did).
“What do you think is going to happen?” Em says with a tilt of her head.
Biological weapons. Superviruses that can’t be cured. Terror attacks at the university, at my school, on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Hits different, is all I’m saying. These are very real fears. These are things that no doubt creep into most of our minds at least now and then, but if you’re anything like me, they creep in on a much more regular basis. I actually think about the end of the world or the breakdown of society a lot—albeit, not as much as Ellis does, but it’s something that occupies my mind potentially more than it should, so it was easy to identify with that part of the character.
But despite the fact that it would be easy to see Ellis as just the girl whose doomsday anxiety takes over her personality, I was delighted to see that she is actually very multifaceted, and there’s much more to her than that. At no point did the author just shove her into a box and neglect to develop her as a person. Ellis is also a young woman who is struggling to find herself, and struggling to define who she is within the constructs of her religion. She’s questioning and then learning more about her sexuality, which was an interesting journey to see considering she’s LDS, and as a whole, her church would have less than favorable views on her acting on her attractions. She worries about being able to reconcile these parts of herself—the part of herself that is faithful to her religion with the part that makes it feel like who she is is somehow wrong.
She’s also just now learning how to have friends and how to open up to people and let them in, and with the introduction of Hannah and her group of friends, she starts embarking on things most teens have had under their belts for years: skipping class, hanging out in the park, disobeying her parents, and taking risks. We get to watch her grow as a person on the very page in front of us, and it’s hard not to root for her along the way.
Hannah’s a rather complex character, too, and even though she seems much more sure of herself than Ellis does on a surface level, she’s dealing with a lot and we get to delve into her past and the way she reacts to certain traumas of her own. Overall, I liked most of the characters in this book. They felt like very real people, who all had their own struggles and their own personalities. People I could know. People I do know—right down to the lady being just a little too over-eager about selling MLM essential oils out of the trunk of her car after church services.
Hannah’s little crew consisting of Tal, Sam, and Theo rounds out the cast perfectly, and even though they have moments where they come off a little bit stereotypically “smart stoner California boy” (especially Sam), they’re really endearing. There’s a part near the end where, without going into any spoilers, Sam kind of unexpectedly comes out with this real show of support for Ellis, and it was just so sweet, and she was new to the friend group, but he was so accepting, and it honestly just warmed my heart for some reason. There were a lot of touching moments in the book between friends, between potential lovers, between mother and daughter or father and daughter or sisters, so I don’t know why but that one moment really got to my heartstrings.
If you haven’t gotten the gist yet, I liked this. I liked it a lot. It was relatable, it was heartwarming, it was funny, and also a tiny bit dark. It had a great, very real, well-developed cast of characters, an interesting plot, and a dynamic setting. It had good diversity and representation that came across very naturally and not forced, making it easier to see yourself in this group of people; they’re just like your friends, your community. All a little bit different and just being who they are. It tackled some big issues and hit some classic YA coming-of-ages struggles—the sorts of things that resonate with people no matter what age, especially people who are still growing and changing and finding out more about themselves.
I’d give it a five out of five and I’d have no qualms recommending it to readers of any age. After reading this, I definitely want to check out Henry’s debut novel, Heretics Anonymous. This all seems right in my wheelhouse, honestly.
Has anyone else read this one? What did you think? Let me know in the comments! As always, I’d love to chat. <3
In the meantime, stay safe and stay sane!