In 2018 writer Hank Green debuted his book An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, where we met April May, a 23 year old New Yorker, who one night stumbles across a giant sculpture—"like a ten-foot-tall Transformer wearing a suit of samurai armor"—April and her best friend Andy name the sculpture Carl, they post a video on social media-- it goes viral, and they learn that other identical Carls have appeared all over the world. April finds herself at the center of an intense international media spotlight as she works to figure out not just what the Carls are, but what they want from us. And now Hank Green’s much anticipated sequel, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor, has just been released. We are immediately dropped back into the story where the world is reeling from the disappearance of the Carls and the assumed-death of April May.
The sequel is told in alternating narratives of April May’s closest friends—Andy, Maya, and Miranda— as they try to figure out who they are as individuals outside of April’s orbit. A series of clues arrive in the form mysterious books that seem to predict the future and control the actions of their readers—all of which seems to suggest that April could be very much alive, and that their “new normal” could be spinning out of control faster than they imagined. The sequel is a fast-paced adventure, with biting social commentary. It asks questions about the way we live, our freedoms, the future of technology, and how we handle the unknown.