All This & More - Peng Shepherd - 2024 Top Book Pick!

Speculative Fiction

Rating: 9/10

It happened one unremarkable Friday night. Without prelude, without fanfare. One minute everyone was finishing up their dinner, the next they were turning on the television to find a show that would change the world forever.

Reality TV was still considered nothing more than a guilty pleasure before All This & More premiered. A show with a simple premise: each season, a contestant would have ten episodes to try and better themselves and alter their lifepath. All thanks to Quantum bubbling. A science that allows you to create iterations of reality branching off from one moment, then collapsing them all again once you are done. It's like being able to see all possible versions of the future based on choices you make.

Marsh never expected to be chosen as the star of Season 3, to get a chance for a do over. She accepts that some doors had closed firmly on her life choices, so quietly at times that she didn’t even realize it had happened. Now the possibilities seem endless. Is she dreaming to think that maybe she can have her cake and eat it too?

What happens if the bubble makes changes, ones you didn’t ask for, or more importantly, want? What happens if the dreams you had are being replaced? What happens if the threads you choose start overlapping in odd ways? And, what happened to Season 2?

I love a book that thwarts the traditional rules of structure.

This is a brilliantly framed novel, in essence a choose your own adventure for grownups. You can choose to read straight through, or you can follow the multiple threads and loop around. I counted twenty-three. And yes, I counted.

Book Pairing(s): The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd, Sevendown by David Whitton, Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu