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| Cover image taken from Goodreads. |
Everything All at Once, by Katrina Leno
Rating: 4/5
Acquisition: Uppercase subscription
Greetings, fellow readers!
I come to you with a review of August’s Uppercase selection, Everything All at Once by Katrina Leno. This is my first blog posting in a while, but this is the first book I’ve read in a while that I really feel like I have something to say about. I didn’t read a darn thing in July, and a lot of what I read before and after that sad, sad, time of slump was neither here nor there, just, you know, “meh.” Hopefully, this will get me back in the swing of reviewing!
So, anyhow, let’s get right to it.
Everything All at Once follows Lottie Reaves, an 18-year-old from Connecticut who has just lost her aunt to breast cancer. Aunt Helen was a huge role model for Lottie, and also the author of a very popular series of middle-grade fiction about an immortal 13-year-old boy and his (also immortal) eleven-year-old sister. This series is, like, Harry Potter levels of popular, and the whole world seems to be grieving right along with Lottie and her family. Aunt Helen has left 24 letters for Lottie, each with a small task to perform. Some of them are meant to push Lottie out of her comfort zone, and some are to prepare her for the big reveal at the end of the book, which I’m going to get to in a second.
Alright, y’all. I am literally typing this review up minutes after finishing this book, and my heart is very, very sad. So sad. This was a brilliant novel with a crap ending. I have never been so freaking disappointed in my life. The ending alone is the reason for the 4-star rating. I would give the first 300-ish pages 12 stars if I could. I’m seething.
First, I want to gush a second about the first part of this book, so buckle your seatbelts, because I have a laundry list of things I loved.
- Lottie doesn’t keep secrets.
I made a Facebook post awhile back, before I started this blog, about my feelings about YA characters that keep major-plot-point secrets from people. I feel like every YA character is always keeping something from someone. My Facebook post noted what I think every time this happens: I always think of that clip from Aladdin where Aladdin is talking to Genie about how Jasmine can’t find out he’s not a prince, and Genie conjures up this giant chalkboard with the words “TELL HER THE TRUTH,” which he pretty much screams in Aladdin’s face. I AM GENIE, y’all. I always get really frustrated by YA characters that do this. I’m not saying it isn’t realistic, because, ya know, adolescence. But it was refreshing to see a teenager who was willed 24 letters by her dead aunt who wasn’t super-duper secretive about their contents. Like, she had her best friend or her love interest or her brother or her dad or some combination of the above accompany her to perform almost every single task. That was nice. It seemed healthy.
- Lottie has anxiety.
Lottie has an anxiety disorder. It seems like, prior to the start of the novel, her panic attacks would come on from normal stuff, like huge crowds or too much homework. But after the untimely death of her aunt (she was only in her 40’s) she starts thinking anxious thoughts about death. I really appreciated the way this was portrayed. I have a soft spot for books that deal with mental health, provided they do it well, of course. I could have used books like this or Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia when I was a teen and starting to feel some anxiety symptoms myself.
- Alvin Hatter
The fact that Aunt Helen was a famous author plays a huge role in this book. I just really love the way that the Alvin Hatter series is portrayed, because I would be 100% shocked if the Harry Potter fandom was not the inspiration for the Alvin Hatter fandom. Shocked to bits. It just feels like some good, old-fashioned nostalgia. It also carries a really good message of the power of stories.
This is the part where I stop gushing. This is the part where I talk about the ending. I am going to get spoilery here. If you do not want to be spoiled, know that a thing happened a little over three quarters of the way through the book that honked me off immensely. The anger stemmed from the offending plot twist not jiving well at all with the rest of the book. That's all you need to know. If you plan on reading this book and don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading NOW.
Are you gone yet?
How about now?
We okay?
Good.
So, Lottie has this love interest Sam. She meets him at the party that Helen arranged before her death to be thrown on the first Saturday after she was gone. Sam says he knew Helen because he audited a college course she taught. Lottie and Sam have a thing throughout the book. It’s kinda cute.
Yeah, Sam lied. Sam knew Helen when she was a teenager. Sam is immortal.
A FREAKING CONTEMPORARY, REALISTIC NOVEL, THREE-HUNDRED PAGES IN, DECIDES TO DROP THIS.
There are thousands of other “big secrets” Helen could have kept. I get that immortal Sam was the inspiration for immortal Alvin and Margo, but come on.
Sure, there are hints, but they’re in the form of weird reactions Sam has to things Lottie says or does. Again, there are a million secrets Sam could have that could make him react oddly to small comments or actions. But immortality. If this were already a sci-fi or fantasy book, absolutely fine. If this had happened at the beginning of the novel, like, at most within 50 pages, also fine. Nothing wrong with magical realism. But three hundred pages in? I didn’t buy it. And I was so disappointed, because I was crazy about this book for most of it.
That’s all I have to say for now. I’m just disappointed.
Happy reading,
Ally
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