Today’s our stop on the blog tour for Up All Night, a YA anthology where each story is set over the course of a single night. Obviously, we have been excited about this one since we first heard of it so, on the off chance that you’re not as excited as us, let us try convince you why you should be!
And, as ever, there’s a mix to listen to at the end!
When everyone else goes to bed, the ones who stay up feel like they’re the only people in the world. As the hours tick by deeper into the night, the familiar drops away and the unfamiliar beckons. Adults are asleep, and a hush falls over the hum of daily life. Anything is possible.
It’s a time for romance and adventure. For prom night and ghost hunts. It’s a time for breaking up, for falling in love—for finding yourself.
Stay up all night with these thirteen short stories from bestselling and award-winning YA authors like Karen McManus, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nina LaCour, and Brandy Colbert, as they take readers deep into these rarely seen, magical hours.
Up All Night
ed. by Laura Silverman
Rep: bi disabled mc, sapphic mc, nonbinary li, Jewish bi mc, Black gay mc, Indian American gay li, gay, lesbian, bi & nonbinary characters
CWs: child sexual abuse, domestic abuse, infidelity, car crash, death of a parent, self harm
Release: 13th July 2021
Five Reasons to Read This Book
Number one. The sheer variety of stories within it. There’s contemporary, there’s fantasy. There’s some with romance and there’s some without. Basically, whatever floats your boat, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. And each and every one of those stories is good. This is a very solid anthology in that there wasn’t a single story in here that we didn’t like. So, if this sounds up your alley, then we can wholeheartedly say that you’ll have a good time reading it.
Number two. All of the stories manage to fully invoke the nights they’re spanning. It’s like, they’re quiet in a way, like the nights they’re representing. When you read it, all there is is you and the story, much like if you were alone at night. It doesn’t matter which author you’re reading, they all give off that immaculate vibe. Which, really, is what you want when you’re reading a themed anthology. (Plus, it will be made even more so if you listen to our mix while you read…just saying!)
Number three. Often the focus of the stories is not the romance and simply folks existing. For LGBT folks, that feels somewhat revolutionary. There are still so many instances of seeing people say “this book is hardly gay” because there just happens to be no romance, it just happens to feature a gay character merely existing. This anthology is a welcome antidote to that feeling.
Number four. It’s full of realistic and well-rounded characters. Each story is, perhaps unsurprisingly, very character focused, and each story is replete with characters that feel so real, it’s almost as if you were there with them. They’re the kind of characters that you remember long after you’ve finished the book, the sort that you wish there were longer stories about (although, another point, each story in this was a very well-judged short story: just enough to make you wish for more, but also enough that it doesn’t feel like a bit of a longer story that you know nothing about). Pretty much a perfect style, really.
Number five. There’s a truly great line-up of authors behind this anthology. If the cover and the concept don’t grab you at first (and, really, why wouldn’t they?), then take a look at the authors in this list and tell us you don’t now desperately want to read this book.
So, have we convinced you that you want to read this book?
