DNF: This was supposed to be funny? It starts with a kid trying to escape a rapist? No, just no. Not even remotely what I call funny. Hard pass.

In this, her debut novel, Emily Jane hits a home run with On Earth as It Is on Television. This sci-fi/fantasy book is a funny, heart-warming look at what it means to be human.

Spaceships suddenly appear and hover over major cities around the world. The aliens don't communicate but hysteria breaks out between those fearing the end of the human race and those wanting to welcome these extraterrestrial visitors. Why are they here? What do they want? And why is the government just now telling people that this isn't the first time they have visited? Just as suddenly as they appeared, they were gone. Meanwhile...

Oliver has been catatonic for twenty years after a horrific car accident. Now he is suddenly waking up and slowly recovering his memories. What triggered his awakening?

Blaine is trying to cope with life. Married to a woman who can do it all and two constantly bickering children who are only civilized when watching TV, he is in a dead-end civil service job with a flat-world espousing, part-time militia member of a partner who loves to flaunt the rules. When the spaceships arrive, Blaine's partner feels vindicated in his beliefs and heads for his survivalist retreat leaving Blaine to ponder what's next for him and his family.

Heather feels like the odd person out in her family. Her stepfather is a highly successful reality television show producer who was once a Jeopardy! champion; her genius stepbrother is debating between attending Stanford or Harvard; her mother always tries to include her in the family activities, and she just broke up with her video-game-addicted boyfriend. Life couldn't get worse, right?

These are the main characters whose lives we follow as they deal with the reality of the spaceships' sudden appearance and subsequent disappearance.

Although I could have done with less of the bickering children, all-in-all this was a fun read. I especially liked the role the cats played and how the appearance of spaceships affected the main characters. Reading this book may result in one reassessing those odd neighbors: are they really aliens in disguise? 4.5 stars.

Thank you, NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for an advance copy of this book. The publication date is June 13, 2023.

I have learned that zany, humorous science fiction is just not my jam. That being said, I think this first-contact story got stronger as it went on and slowly revealed its secrets, but I appreciated it more than I enjoyed it. The book switches between multiple narrators, but their voices were all a little too same-same. If you like weird, goofy stories, I think you'll do well with this book, and I definitely liked the second half of the book more than the first. Thank you to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for a digital review copy.

“For thousands of years, humans had gazed up at a brilliant plethora of unreachable universes; they had pondered the expanse between the flat Earth and the starry heavens, the meaning of Earth and sun and sky, the existence of life elsewhere, life in all its wondrous forms. Throughout the short span of their existence, individual and collective, they wondered: What did it all mean? What was out there? Was it brutal and merciless? Ravenous? Curious? Soft and kind? Would they find in the heavens, as on Earth, life across the spectrum, from kitten to shark, from clever child to brainless worm? No one knew. No one had ever gone out there, past the cold hunk of orbiting moon. Not until now.”

I’ll admit, this book took me a minute to get into. Alien spaceships that appear out of nowhere, then disappear without any reason for their abrupt coming and going? Cats randomly flocking, and lots of seemingly disconnected perspectives? I honestly almost DNF’d it. But I pushed through and I’m so glad I did! Once you start to connect the different characters the book focuses on, and once some things are revealed, it gets really interesting and the storyline shows up. Throughout the book the writing is witty and hilarious. It’s truly what kept me going. I don’t even like cats, but all the cat voices talking in peoples heads cracked me up! And the crazy kids, and the Malortian obsession with plastics and bacon. It really is a quirky, funny book that is ultimately an endearing story about family in all it’s forms, and what it means to belong and be accepted. It was sweet and I would recommend to anyone who can stick with it through the first half. Thanks NetGalley for the ARC!

I DNFed this book fairly early. I agree with the other reviews that the synopsis didn’t come close to the content. I too was expecting something lighter than what I read.

The elevator pitch was interesting enough: A first contact story about alien ships that arrive on Earth, hang out for a bit, and then... leave.

And that's the basic plot. But it leaves out the surrounding elements that make this book special: TV-obsessed children, runaway cats, and perspective on what really matters when you think about where you're from, where you're going, and why.

Emily Jane's On Earth as It Is on Television takes a little bit to get going, but it grips its cats claws into you and doesn't let go. It's earnest and heartfelt and often hilarious. It's about aliens and humanity and heckin' chomkers; it's about buying 10 packs of bacon, false accusations, conspiracy theorists and reality television. It's about road trips and reflections and family.

It's a great book.

DNF. I think I'm going to start waiting until sample chapters are available somewhere to request things on NetGalley because this is the third book in a row where the content didn't remotely match the cover or description. This book starts in such a dark and upsetting place (a minor fleeing her rapist). I was expecting a quirky, fun alien contact story, but this book just made me sad. I couldn't finish it.

I saw the title and immediately I requested. On Earth as It Is on Television is a funny alien invasion story. We follow 3 characters and read about their experience while they were dealing with aliens coming to Earth. I really enjoyed it a lot. It was such a fast-paced book with humor. And I should mention there are cats in the story. I won't spoil what they do. Overall, this was a really lovely read. I'll recommend it a lot. Thanks to Hyperion Avenue the for the arc.

Unfortunately, there were a few elements of this book that I think won't work for many readers. The book starts out with a prologue following two teenage half siblings who are driving cross country to escape abusive parents. They are both reflecting on the life they've lived and everything that is to come. I loved it and it set the scene for what felt like an indie movie.

We quickly lead into the core story of the book, where we follow multiple people experiencing aliens arriving to Earth. At first I was intrigued, but then quickly realized that the story did not have a clear plot. It felt like less of a story and more just generic reports on what random people were doing and thinking about in regular days of their lives. Even while the news were claiming an apocalypse, and the aliens arrived, none of the characters really reacted all that much anyway. I think this could've been really good and maybe would've improved if there was a clear way that their stories intersected, but by the 30% my interest had been lost, so it was a DNF for me.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC, in exchange for an honest review!

I unfortunately could not finish this book. The synopsis did not seem to accurately match the content, especially in the first few chapters; I expected something light-hearted and ended up with something heavier than what I was looking for when requesting this ARC. A lot of characters are thrown at you, and I personally had a lot of trouble keeping track of who was who. I also couldn’t help but notice a formatting issue when trying to read it on a Kindle device; some of the lines randomly stopped mid-screen, and the chapters started in the middle of the page, without any kind of page break separating it from the previous chapter. I think that this book simply isn’t for me at this time, but I would like to come back and give it another shot when I am more in the mood for it!

Let me start by saying that, overall I enjoyed On Earth as it is on Television because of how unique and, at times, bizarre this story is. We follow three different characters who lead fairly monotonous lives and how they respond to UFOs appearing over major cities across the globe. It took me several weeks to get through this book because of the abrupt change of pace with each of the three stories; by the time I was interested in what one of the characters was doing, the perspective changed. This book is not for you if you do not like reading from multiple perspectives.

By the halfway point in this book, it becomes clear why these three are the stories that we are following. And when that becomes clear, I was hooked. Even though this is about aliens arriving on Earth, they leave almost as suddenly without any contact. This, in my mind, would be worse than an invasion because of the uncertainty of what they want, and Emily Jane captures that well through how characters respond. Some ignore it and continue floating in their pool, some throw welcoming parties, and some are more concerned with the secrets their spouse keeps. The focus is on how humans respond to that and the effect it has on the characters’ relationships.

This book was a unique exploration of what it means for humans if we are not alone in the universe. The stories we follow are both bizarre in what happens and mundane in how very human their responses are. Some questions remain unanswered, like why this alien race is so obsessed with cats, but how unique this story is and how Emily Jane chose to tell it makes this book worth a read.

This was such a fun, unusual read that was simply refreshing. What do aliens, plastic, bacon, cats, and cheese have to do with each other? You find out in this hilariously odd exploration of aliens interacting with the people of Earth.

It took me a little while to get into the story, but once I gave myself enough time to read in a larger block of time, I was completely absorbed in this story.

If you want something light hearted and absolutely unique to read this summer, this is it! I don't want to give anything away but I'm all for the peets and beans.

This book had me at the title to be honest, I didn’t need to know anything else about it! And luckily it was every bit as delightful as the title suggests. It's an alien invasion story like none you’ve ever read, where the arrival of alien life has people referencing Independence Day to imagine what might happen next. It manages to be laugh-out-loud hilarious while also gently probing (as all aliens must) some existential philosophy that you may not expect, and it leaves you warm and grateful for life. What more could you want? Genuinely warm, original and properly funny.

This sci-fi story is absolutely bonkers. Disparate characters and stories break the book into odd pieces but eventually it all starts to meld and smooth out. If you're patient (or like cats) you will be satisfied in the end.

I requested this purely for the excellent title. And I was really pleased to find it to be a funny and clever sci-fi romp. Aliens appear and we dip in and out of 3 characters experiences of what happens next.
There's genuine humour throughout, particularly the parts focused on the cats (and the children's obsession with them). I loved that there was a full explanation and you weren't left wondering what was going on, this is the type of novel that really benefits from loose ends being tied up. So glad I requested this, and shocked this is a debut!

8/10

Thank you NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for this ARC.

I feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch scam. I was told we would investigate "big questions" about "what does it mean that we're not alone" and "what it means to be alive in the twenty-first century". This is certainly promised by the back cover blurb and implied by the vaguely Scripture reference in the title. I would be all over such a story. But that story is barely alluded to in the first half of the book and humorously dismissed by the latter half.

To kick things off we're driving through a snowstorm with politely bickering siblings who have no business being out in such a storm and aren't very good company for anybody. No aliens. No spaceships. No humor.

Skip forward twenty years. Giant alien spaceships appear over major cities for a while and then disappear without making contact or seeming to do anything. Get ready for the big questions - not. The energy of the book goes into examining the mundane. A rocky marriage with bratty children. A girl with a bad boyfriend and odd stepfather. A survivalist who might make things happen, just disappears instead. There should be more clues that the odd behavior could be related to the alien visitors, rather than just odd people acting oddly. Everyone just comes off as confused, including the reader.

Then there are the cats. About the time we start getting revelations (hint: there are aliens among us), the cats start acting oddly, too. We even get a few scenes from a cat viewpoint. And then we don't. We just see the cats from the human point of view. At least things are happening in the last half of the book and the pace picks up. There seems to be a plan, even if the reader doesn't understand it any better than the characters. If I had not committed to writing a review of this book, there's a good chance I would have set it down before things got more interesting and marked it DNF. But I did stick with it and enjoyed some of the absurdity and alien life conjectures of the second half.

With a more conventional story presentation and compelling questions in the first chapters, I might have given this book at least 4 stars. But the rambling paragraphs, jumbled structure, barely sympathetic characters, dangling plot lines and wrap-it-up-in-a-bow ending force me to knock off at least a star. I think the author was going for Close Encounters of the Third Kind crossed with Third Rock from the Sun with some cat-lady spice. But I don't think she pulled it off.

Another ARC I just couldn't finish. The story was going along fine, a bit dull and drawn out but not badly enough to put the book down, when we get a chapter from the cats perception. That's a big no for me. I enjoy some light sci-fi and fantasy but that's too far for me.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Its just too bad my honest review is don't bother.

What would aliens appreciate most about Earth? Turns out it’s the little things like bacon, candy, plastic and especially TV. This is a fun novel that seems lightweight in the telling but really focuses on family issues foremost, from adultery to step-relations to siblings to true love and numerous others. It’s a serious novel that feels like a romp and cats play a prominent, if mysterious, role.

I found this book entertaining and the variety of story lines and characters was compelling. It seemed to wander at times and I did find the different story lines confusing in the beginning. It’s much more complex than I expected and than the title led me to imagine. It’s unique and a book I expect to remember for a long time.

A fun, original take on an alien invasion story with clever characters and interesting voice. The writing is sharp and intelligent with great social satire.

This is a really solid debut novel by Emily Jane and I really hope to read more from her soon. Overall I wish I could rate it a bit higher because I enjoyed the concept and the voice that Jane gives to her characters but the pacing was pretty slow and it was difficult for me to stay focused on the story unfolding before me. I do think that there are a lot of great aspects in this book and I cannot wait to read more from Emily Jane in the future.