"LIFE is many things - good, bad, steady, unexpected - but we can all agree that each one is UNIQUE."
I didn’t really know what I was getting into with All This & More 🤔. It’s a concept I’ve only ever experienced as a child, through the Choose Your Own Adventure stories 📚. Peng takes that idea to a whole different level, delivering it in a far more complex and lengthy way.
I’m not sure how much my experience was affected by listening rather than reading 🎧, but whenever a choice came up, I almost always selected the option that said continue listening. It was simply easier, especially as I was usually doing other things at the same time 🏃♀️🧹. The only exception was right at the end, when I chose to listen to all three endings 👀.
The book blends fantasy, sci-fi, and time travel 🚀✨, which—for the purposes of this story—is explained through quantum physics 🔬. That’s something I don’t understand and probably never will 😂! I’m also not sure whether we’re meant to like Marsh, the female protagonist. To me, she came across as selfish, jumping backward and forward through time countless times ⏳ in an attempt to make every single aspect of her life perfect. That said, the TV show she was starring in gave her that opportunity, so I suppose it’s no surprise that she took full advantage of it 🎬.
Despite a very confusing start 😵💫, I did end up enjoying the story 👍. I chose the first ending—which I won’t reveal here, as I don’t want to spoil it if you decide to read it yourself 🤐.
Thank you to Libro.fm and William Morrow for the opportunity to listen to and review All This & More 🙏✨
About the Book
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’spromises 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?
About Peng
Peng Shepherd is the nationally bestselling, award-winning author of All This and More, The Cartographers, and The Book of M.
Her novels have been acclaimed as a “Best Book of the Year” by the Washington Post, a “Best Book of the Summer” by the Today Show and NPR, and featured in the New York Times, the LA Times, The Atlantic, and on Good Morning America, as well as a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Her work also has been translated into more than ten languages, and optioned for TV and film.
A graduate of New York University’s MFA program, Peng is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She was born in Phoenix, Arizona, where she rode horses and trained in classical ballet, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, Mexico City, and New York. When not writing, she can be found planning her next trip or haunting local bookstores.
