... bracing ... It’s both inspiring—Sherrell is an immensely talented young writer who cares deeply about his subject—and dispiriting: Sherrell knows this stuff backward and forward, and he isn’t hopeful ... In tone and structure, Warmth resembles James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, or Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, ... These are brave books built on an understanding that some battles are worth fighting, some boulders are worth pushing up the hill no matter how many times they come crashing down. Some of the images in Warmth resonate like post-apocalyptic fiction ... Warmth should be required reading for anyone who questions the depth, tenacity, and critical thinking skills of millennials ... an existential yawp, freighted with the ballast of knowledge and intent.
Events are too artless to describe. But emotions have real gravitas. Warmth fluctuates in its emotional tone ... I first found his emotional flipflopping to be jarring and challenging to interpret. But later, I came to think that Sherrell’s diverse emotional palate may in fact reflect the ambivalence most of us feel when it comes to issues of climate change ... For those readers who already know the difference between hoot owls and barn owls, and for those who never knew of their existence, Sherrell awakens a new urgency for reform ... in Warmth, Sherrell makes concrete what is generally too abstract or distant for us to really feel.
Sherrell is a passionate advocate for the climate movement, which he conveys with urgency and honest, raw emotion, expressing an anxiety he feels has infiltrated the essence of his being. He writes with a frightening sense of gravity that will give Generation X and the baby boom generation reason to take a close, hard look at what’s happening and do something ... This is exactly Sherrell’s message. We need to do something—about fossil fuels, corrupt politicians, global food and water security. The list goes on. Warmth is a pleading, informative call to action.
