shelbs_can_try's Reviews (694)


All the Things We Never Knew was such a wonderful read about the romance between two high school students. Carli and Rex are juniors who play varsity basketball at their different schools. When Carli passes out right before her game, who better to come to catch her fall than all-star player Rex.

Immediately after looking into each other’s eyes, the two teenagers hit it off. Before long though, the teenagers have their own underlying issues at home and past trauma that come to light. Both Rex and Carli must face their personal battles while trying to balance basketball and their love for each other.

I loved each of these characters in their own ways so much. I love how inquisitive Carli is. She takes interest in so many things she reads about them and she writes them down and she shares with anyone who will listen. And Rex’s love and respect for trees and plants makes me so soft inside. He wants to be a landscape architect to bring people closer to nature and he knows all this random little facts. He feels a deep connection to trees and his mother.

Overall this book was a great story about young love, finding your self, and seeking forgiveness for yourself and others.

"Everything now, we must assume, is in our hands; we have no right to assume otherwise. If we- and now I mean the relatively conscious white and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of the others- do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world. If we do not now dare everything, the fulfilment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time!"