An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is the debut novel from Hank Green, which I was very excited for. You may be wondering “well, who the hell is Hank Green?” Hank Green is “internet famous,” and if you’ve seen him from anywhere, it’s probably YouTube. He’s most famous for his channels vlogbrothers, Crash Course, and SciShow (as well as all of its spin-off channels), but he also runs Complexly, a company that produces many other YouTube channels. However, for the purpose of an introduction for a book review, perhaps the more important thing to note is that Hank is John Green’s brother. John also works with Hank on many of the YouTube channels, but his initial success came from being an author. He’s one of the more popular young adult authors out there today, having written best-sellers like Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, and, most famously, The Fault in Our Stars. I’ve been a fan of both Green brothers for years now, but up until now they seemed to have very different skill sets (outside of making videos), with John being the writer and Hank being the science guy. So, I was really intrigued when Hank announced that he had written a book, since this only ever seemed like it would be in John’s wheelhouse. I’m pleased to say that his debut novel is actually pretty good, and so I think it’s worth checking out.

Unlike John Green, who tends to have his books based in reality, Hank has written a bit of a sci-fi novel here. It deals with issues on our world, sure, but it does involve alien life, so there’s that. Anyway, what is it? An Absolutely Remarkable Thing takes us into the life of April May, a graphic design student working a crappy job in New York. April is walking home late one night when she just discovers a statue that’s seemingly appeared out of nowhere, sitting on the sidewalk. This doesn’t seem to phase anyone else, but April is really intrigued about why it’s there, and so she calls up her friend Andy to do something spontaneous. The two shoot a video of April at the statue, showing off its beauty to the world. They upload the video, not realizing that they’re about to play a huge part in history. The next morning, April discovers that her video has gone viral. It turns out that many of these same statues have randomly appeared in various parts of the world, and no one knows why or how they got there. April has become part of this “breaking news,” and so she now must deal with the overwhelming problem (or reward) of becoming an overnight celebrity. As the book goes on, the mystery behind the statues deepens, while April starts to change as a person after becoming famous.

It’s definitely not lost on me that the topic of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing is clearly personal to Hank Green himself. He’s been “internet famous” for over 10 years now, and so I’m sure he’s felt or had to deal with many of the issues that April has to in the book. It’s evident that it’s a topic that he’s passionate about, and this shines through in the book. There are a lot of interesting and thought-provoking sections on fame and how it affects us. This doesn’t mean that it’s not relatable to people that aren’t famous, though. There are aspects of April’s character where she feels like she puts on a persona when posting things online, and that kind of stuff has definitely resonated with me as well. Social media is a really bizarre tool, and how we engage with it is something that’s explored in the book that I think all people can connect with on some level.

With that being said, I found my reasons for enjoying the book winded up being the opposite for why I enjoy John Green’s books. With John’s books, the plot is usually a backdrop, while it’s the messages and themes that I find to be the most interesting (which is why Turtles All the Way Down is my favorite John Green book). However, with An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, it’s the opposite. I found the plot in the book with the alien statues to be far more interesting than the messages that the book is trying to push. I think Hank’s science background really helped him craft an intriguing narrative, as I constantly found myself wondering what was going to happen next in the story.

So, to ride along that same vein, I didn’t find the messages to be quite as interesting as the plot. If anyone hasn’t watched or listened to many of Hank’s personal stuff (such as his podcasts or side channels), he tends to get very politically-driven, and this tends to bleed over at times in An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. An example of this is that April is bisexual, and so there’s a lot of parts that wind up going down the road of “why isn’t it okay to be gay?” in a way that’s been done to death in stories of recent years, and so it doesn’t really add anything profound to the subject. My biggest criticism of Hank’s work in general is that he winds up going on a bit of a soapbox too often, and this has unfortunately bled over into his book. It’s not a huge dealbreaker of a problem by any means, but it is present. Like I said earlier, the topic that I found most interesting that’s explored in the book is the idea of how fame affects people, and luckily this is the core of the book, not the other stuff.

In the end, while I may have taken issue with the soapbox preachiness in certain parts of the book, on the whole I found An Absolutely Remarkable Thing to be a highly entertaining read. If you want a book that explores overnight fame, this is definitely the book for you. At the very least, though, I found it to be a really interesting mystery, and so if you’re at all into sci-fi kinds of stories, then this is really awesome. Since this is a book that I winded up reading because I’m a fan of the author, I’m always a little unsure of how much I should recommend it to people that aren’t familiar with his other work. I’d definitely say that if you’re a fan of either of the Green brothers’ work, then give the book a shot. Otherwise, read the book only if you’re interested in the story or themes that I described. All in all, for a debut book I found An Absolutely Remarkable Thing to be really good.

4/5