Review: All We Can Do Is Wait

 '' Life can end, suddenly. But it can also stretch on and on and on. ''

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

From Goodreads:

In the hours after a bridge collapse rocks their city, a group of Boston teenagers meet in the waiting room of Massachusetts General Hospital:

Siblings Jason and Alexa have already experienced enough grief for a lifetime, so in this moment of confusion and despair, Alexa hopes that she can look to her brother for support. But a secret Jason has been keeping from his sister threatens to tear the siblings apart…right when they need each other most.

Scott is waiting to hear about his girlfriend, Aimee, who was on a bus with her theater group when the bridge went down. Their relationship has been rocky, but Scott knows that if he can just see Aimee one more time, if she can just make it through this ordeal and he can tell her he loves her, everything will be all right.

And then there’s Skyler, whose sister Kate—the sister who is more like a mother, the sister who is basically Skyler’s everything—was crossing the bridge when it collapsed. As the minutes tick by without a word from the hospital staff, Skyler is left to wonder how she can possibly move through life without the one person who makes her feel strong when she’s at her weakest.

Waiting for news is always the worst. You don't know if it'll be good news or bad, if you're going to get them in the next fifteen minutes or if you have to wait for hours. You just have to sit tight, hope for the best, and wait. 

Told by multiple viewpoints, All We Can Do Is Wait is a story about the aftermath of a tragedy that shook the lives of many. Death brings emotions to the surface, many descend into denial, but the only way to survive is to move on. It just takes a little time and effort. 

I really liked the concept of the story, of dealing with grief in different ways. Although most of the book was flashbacks explaining the background stories of each character, it felt the story was still moving forward. To understand the characters and their pain, you have to understand the reasons behind their pain. The plot only scratched the surface, but I think it was enough. To go any deeper into the grief and pain might have stretched the plot too thin. 

The characters were quite equally likeable. None of them stood out to me as the most relatable or unrelatable one which worked in favour of the book. Since each of the characters has a turn in the narrative, I think hating or loving one character over the others would have disrupted the flow of the plot. All of their behaviours were of a stereotypical teenager's, so no groundbreaking adulting there. 

If you are looking for a book to get you out of that pesky reading slump or a quick read in between two heavier ones, this is the one for you! It's a few pages under the three hundred mark and the plot will keep you turning the pages faster than the wind.