Everything All at Once

Reading Everything All at Once, it is as if Steph Catudal takes off all of her clothes, stands before you, and shamelessly points out every emotional battle scar she has ever acquired over the years. In the vehicle that is Everything all At Once and without fear she describes the historic places where her childhood cut and coming of age left invisible burn marks. With total honesty she appears to leave nothing out. The rage, the rebellion, the overwhelming urge to self-destruct. She courageously shows you her biggest wound: how she coped with the pain of losing her father to cancer. She embraced drug-fueled recklessness as a mechanism to forget; a secret seething rage. She didn't know who she was without the destructive behavior of addiction. Her healing is a story in itself but wait, there is more. Her youth is only a preface to a bigger disaster of the heart. When her husband of twelve years develops a cancer so rare only ten other people had its diagnosis (and didn't survive), Steph acquires the ultimate damaging scar only love can inflict. He is expected to die. How many times can medical professionals and hospital chaplains tell you this before you believe it? Expect it? Steph had to wish end of life in order to be in the same hospital room as her husband. I don't want to spoil the rest of the book. I spent way more time explaining its importance than reviewing it. In a nutshell, Steph is a rare bird, rising from the ashes of a past that should have killed her. Instead, she emerges stronger, more resilient, and dare I say, even more badass?

My daughter lost her father at the age of 13 and reading this memoir gave me some insight into her feelings of loss and trying to make sense of the world. Steph comes face to face with that unresolved grief when faced with her husband going through the same cancer diagnosis that took her father. Beautifully written and with the feeling that the author is being open and vulnerable.

absolutely charming, and some great anxiety rep

“The moment I started reading, I was no longer in my bedroom, no longer sad, no longer even myself.”

This is a mediocre/good book that had the potential to be great/amazing, but alas, it didn't reach that potential. It's a shame really, because I loved many components of this book, but I didn't love the book as a whole all that much.

Let's start with the good stuff:
- Healthy and heartwarming siblings relationship portrayal.
​- Diversity all throughout.
- Anxiety representation.
- And the main topic of this book is grief, which is such an important topic, that maybe doesn't get explored enough.

I think main reason as to why this book fell so flat for me was the writing - don't get me wrong, it was pleasant, easy and enjoyable, but it definitely was missing a spark. This could have been a very emotional book, but it wasn't, at all. Not to me at least. The words were there, the topic was there but the execution just wasn't.

When I picked this book up to read I was under the impression that this was young adult, and I think that it's marketed as one, but besides an occasional use of word "shit" there was nothing young adult about it. The whole ending and a plot twist, if you can call it that, was very juvenile.

​I am also not a fan "book inside of a book excerpts" and this book had them after each chapter. They also contributed big time to the book feeling much more like middle grade than young adult. Normally I love to get my hands on some good middle grade, but with this book I wasn't feeling it. Maybe because I set myself up for young adult setting. I'm not sure. I guess my overall feeling of this book is "I'm not sure what went wrong, but it wasn't as good as I thought it might".

​Despite all of that there were many things that I liked, especially when anxieties were mentioned - it did feel real and relatable. I enjoyed many of the things Lottie did, but also a lot of those things felt a bit too simple, a bit too mundane. The cover of the book did say "24 dares", so once again my hopes were a bit too high.

​Also I wasn't a big fan of the whole "super famous writer aunt, with movies and merchandize made out of her books." I immediately thought about the author of Harry Potter as being inspiration for that particular character arc. Some people might enjoy that, but to me it just felt like an overkill.

​In the end, the book felt easily forgettable - it didn't give me what I was hoping it would. However that is a personal feeling and the book might work out for many other people. I'd recommend it, but as a middle grade book, definitely not a young adult.

Lottie Reaves has spent the last few months watching her Aunt Helen die of breast cancer. She and millions of her writer aunt’s readers mourn the loss of a great story teller through her Alvin books. When the time comes to read Helen’s will and final testament, Lottie is given a stack of letters and her aunt’s personal journals and laptop along with whatever trinkets she wants from the house.
In the first letter Aunt Helen lets Lottie know how much she wishes she could be there for her. But despite the loss in a way those letters would keep Lottie’s aunt alive long enough to help her navigate through life for a few more weeks. They take her to new places, reveal secrets and make Lottie do things that she admittedly wouldn’t have done on her own.
“Look, Lottie, I get it. I get that you’re scared of hurting yourself and you’re scared of dying, but you can’t go through life that way.”
“I can absolutely go through life without ever jumping off a cliff,” I argued.
“Yes you can, but you can’t go through life without taking risks. And this is a risk, sure, but it’s a relatively small one compared to the risk of getting into an accident ever time you get in a car or the risk of losing your luggage when you go on a plane or the risk of getting a paper cut every time you pick up a notebook. Life is a risk, Lottie. Sometimes you have to answer its call.” - such a great moment and it was only one of the first ones. There were better parts in the latter part of the book too.
Can I start this off with holy diversity? First of all Lottie’s a mixed kid because her parents are an interracial couple, her mom’s a Peruvian immigrant. Her best friend is a loud and proud lesbian with blue hair that wears tuxes and dates a ballerina. Her brother Abe has a black girlfriend. There were mentions of a gay lawyer, a tiny person (I forgot what the condition was called but Clarice was a doll and very much appreciated), an androgynous shopkeeper with they/them pronouns and an artsy girlfriend, homophobic parents, anxiety problems, and a whole bunch of other kinds of people that just felt real. I can’t remember the last book I read were between all this diversity there wasn’t a big neon billboard saying LOOK AT ME AND HOW INCLUSIVE I AM. It was a nice change of pace.
The story within the story Alivin and the… reminded me of Tuck Everlasting. Whenever a character is described as being a famous children’s author the one most like to emulate is JK Rowling. Sure the story had some elements of magic but nope, it was just about a brother and sister duo that found a bottle of everlasting youth potion. The way it was woven into the story was so good to the point where I let myself be immersed and suspend all belief. Once the magical realism of everyday life was mixed in with some actual magical realism it didn’t even take me out of the story. I still felt like plowing through it all. It was such a good story.