All This and More — Books, Beauty, & Buys

By: Peng Shepherd
Published Year: 2024
Publisher: William and Morrow
Pages: 469

Summary (Provided by Goodreads): From the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of The Cartographers and The Book of M comes an inventive new novel about a woman who wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made… and how far she’ll go to find her elusive “happily ever after.”

But there’s a twist: the reader gets to decide what she does next to change her fate.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she’s missed her chance at everything—romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure—and is desperate for a do-over.

She can’t believe her luck when she’s selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It’s Marsh’s only shot to seize her dreams, and she’s determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More’s promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off.…

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Perfect for fans of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, bestselling author Peng Shepherd’s All This and More is an utterly original, startlingly poignant novel that puts the reader in the driver’s seat.

First Impressions

This cover is very intriguing. I was immediately drawn in. I loved The Cartographers by Shepherd and was curious when I read that this book was for readers who enjoyed The Midnight Library. The funny thing is it also said for people who liked Life After Life which is infamously one of my book club’s least favorite picks. I knew I needed to read it when it was available at my library.

What I thought

This book is definitely unlike any I’ve read before.

Marsh is the Season 3 contestant on a show called All This and More. The premise of the show is that quantum bubbling allows a person to try out whatever possibility for their life that they want within a bubble, and then choose which one is perfect for them. Now it is Marsh’s turn, but things aren’t turning out quite like she expected.

This book is sort of written like the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my childhood. You do have the option to read it straight from cover to cover until you get close to the end of the story. My issue that I’ve had with this style of story since I was a kid is that I don’t want to feel like I missed anything. So, of course, I read this book from cover to cover. I do think there is a way that you could essentially read every chapter even with jumping around, but I just went straight through. There were a few chapters right at the very end that were repetitive because they brought you back to the season finale, but I didn’t mind because I wanted to know every possibility.

It was so interesting to see all the different variations of life that Marsh could try and how things would play out. The problems that the bubble was having was sort of predictable to me. I had a feeling pretty early on that I knew what was going on and ended up being mostly right, with maybe a few minor details I didn’t flesh out.

I really enjoyed this entire story and couldn’t wait to see what Marsh was going to do next. The one thing I really didn’t like was the ending. There are three options that you can choose from and I read all three of them and only kind of liked one of them. I do think this could be a fascinating book club book but don’t know how it would work as an audiobook.