I did enjoy some of the characters, but I’m not sure it was everything I wanted it to be. full review on Goodreads.

Like many others before me, I found this book to be not for me. I'm not sure what I expected it to be, but this book wasn't that.

After reading several other reviews where readers had issues with boredom in the first half but then loved it, I had high hope. Unfortunately, that didn't happen for me. I wanted to love this but it fell pretty flat.

•Pro: I love mixed format books, and this one included emails, blog posts, photos, letters, and more. The different formats were used well, and were cleverly used to bring in different perspectives.

•Pro: Flora was a star. I loved her voice from page one, and I was so happy to go on this journey with her.

•Pro: The colorful cast of characters gave me the gift of laughter over and over again.

•Pro: Flora and her sister had a sisterly bond that made me jealous. Lael was an incredible big sister and was still there for Flora even when she went against her advice.

•Con: The ending was sweet, but I am not too sure what the intention was. Not disappointing, because I smiled, but still not sure about it.

•Pro: As radical as the school was for me, there were a lot of interesting ideas discussed and I like when I am made to look at something in a different way or left with food for thought.

•Pro: There are many, many feminists in this book, and therefore. lots of feminists discussions. But what I loved most about this girl-powered group, was how they wanted to support one of their own in her time of need.

Overall: A fun and quirky coming of age tale filled with wonderful and interesting characters, which left me with a smile on my head and a lot of interesting thoughts in my head.

This is a book of "stuff" a story told through so many mediums that it keeps you flipping through it.

I am not sure how I felt about this book. I loved that there was a feminist overlay to it, but I felt it went over the top and that many people would find it to be in your face or it being shoved down your throat. I feel like the book would have gone over better for me if the feminist agenda would have been a little more subtle. For me, it was almost as if it just tried too hard. Flora started out as a girl who applied to a school just because some boy she was infatuated with went there, and even throughout the book that was a running theme until the very end, so for the book to be so overtly over the top with the feminism didn't make much since. If it had built up gradually, and showed the progressive change of Flora's attitude it would have been more realistic to me..

I can honestly tell you that I've never read a YA book quite like this, or any book for that matter. The non-ARC version, I presume, will be a bit interactive with photos, etc but even the e-ARC was so charming with its hints of the multi-media promise. A lot of this book is told in letters, e-mails and diary entries and I always love that type of formatting, when done well. I hate to tell you what this is about more than the blurb but I will tell you that Flora Goldwasser was such a well-developed narrator. I really enjoyed this book, especially after the first few chapters. Ultimately, this book really made me think and look at things in every day life in a new way. I would say this book has a lot to recommend it.

Everything Must Go came out earlier this week on October 3, 2017 and you can purchase HERE. I definitely recommend this one for fans of quirky YA, vintage clothing and unrequited love.

If I were Molly Ringwald in a John Hughes movie, I would have slid to the ground with my back against the wall, knees at my chest, a hand clutching my throat, and a dazed expression on my face. But I was more of a take-action type of girl, so I grabbed a set of prints that Mr. Greenberg hadn't asked for and hurried through the door By the time I reached the art room, Elijah was gone. I worked for the next few hours in a distracted daze, and when I went home, i organized and reorganized my closet until I was calm enough to slice some strawberries and read Anna Karenina.

Pretty fun story , actually! The idea that an upper class society girl (only 16) would chase some young man to a what amounted to little more than a run down hippy commune schools, just makes me laugh! Not a likely scenario, but ya never know! Anyway, lover boy changes his mind about attending, opting to go to a conventional college and leaving Flora stranded out in the cow pies!
Although written in a few different styles, journal, email, blog,etc... it got old after a bit and reminded me of Green Acres meets the 21st century. Maybe I'll go back to it later, but just now, I need a break from it (must be my age!) BUT I'd bet some girls 14 and up will find it hilarious and a fun, easy read.

This is a quintessential quirky, funny, thought-provoking, pleasure read! Told in emails, letters, journal entries, blog posts, and recorded conversations, Everything Must Go is a story told in ephemera that really works.

Flora is trying to hide her love and admiration for her former tutor. She follows him to Quare, the hippie school he was always talking about but he changes his plans at the last minute. She feels instantly out of place at a school for artistic, hippie types. Flora has to decide if she’ll make the most of her new school or run away.

Flora is a pretty unforgettable character with a unique voice. She loves fashion, vintage pieces, and the comforts of air conditioning. We get to know her through her emails and journal entries. Her voice reminds me of one of my favorite characters, Mia Thermopolis. Like Mia, Flora’s journal is her private place to write about her crush, the things she doesn’t want anyone else to know about, and her plans that don’t turn out quite like she hoped. It’s the only place that she writes the truth about why she went to Quare, while telling everyone else its because she’s bored with her current school and wants to challenge herself. Her journal becomes the place where she can record the truth.

Everything Must Go successfully uses the epistolary format to provide depth to Flora’s character. She writes her true feelings in her journal and writes a different version of herself in the emails to her friends and family. We even see her many failed attempts at writing emails to her tutor, trying to capture what she’s feeling about him without sounding desperate. The letters, journal entries, and messages capture the experience of feeling out of your depth and eventually learning to swim. Flora captures her own growth and self evolution through her exchanges.

Flora goes on a self-discovery journey while at Quare and meets a lot of interesting people along the way. She records her funny first reactions to the quirky inhabitants of Quare and grows to love many of them by the end of the book. Davis provided a cast of dynamic characters for Flora to interact with and each of them helps her in her path of self-discovery. She starts the school year as the fish out of water, wearing the wrong clothes and thinking the wrong things. By the end of the book she has a whole gaggle of friends who support her. Flora goes to Quare for one purpose only and ends up finding so much more there.

This is a feminist story about expressing yourself, allowing yourself to change, and finding confidence within yourself. It’s easy to write off a girl like Flora as a vapid girl who just wants to impress an older guy, but this book invites the reader to question why a girl like that is so easy to judge.

I enjoyed this book more than I had anticipated. I read a couple of reviews that were not glowing, so I admit, I may have started with a poor attitude. And it did take me awhile to find myself invested. But I'm glad I persevered, because this was a wonderful coming of age novel. As the product of a private all girls school I found myself completely identifying with Flora. Her thoughts and feelings, her rationale for behavior, her justifications, her search for herself all felt familiar and real for me. And it was that connection, that "realness" of characters that drew me in and made this book a winner for me.

Simply a fun read. This book embodies the ups and downs of adolescence and the realities of youth in the modern society that we live in. Written through a series of letters, emails, and other personal effects, Davis' story shows readers that you may find out the most important things about yourself in the most unlikely places.

I really wanted to LOVE this book after reading the description but it just couldn't get completely swept away in it. Flora is a character who was written to be self absorbed and a bit privileged. After falling for her tutor, she makes the choice to leave her fancy NYC school and head upstate to a Quaker school. This drastic change for a boy who skips out on the experience last minute shows the reader the kind of person Flora is from the start. She grows and changes through her time at Quare, learning more about herself and others, but the process is LONG and I found her to be a bit unrelated at times. The story is told in emails and texts between Flora and her family and friends. The idea of growth and self discovery is prevalent and I really enjoyed watching that be explored through her experiences, but overall I just couldn't find myself connecting to Flora. I feel like some of my students will really love this story, but for me it was just ok.

Everything Must Go was certainly not the book I expected, from start to finish. However, the book I actually got was a bit of a hidden gem. This book was smart, funny, and feminist. It’s definitely one of the more *~intelligent~* YA contemporaries I’ve read recently, but the writing never took itself too seriously or came off as pretentious. This is a story about making mistakes and somehow finding yourself along the way.

One thing I adored about Everything Must Go was the format. The story is told through a collection of documents, from letters, to emails, to journal entries, to blog posts. (Side note: the formatting was a little wonky on the e-ARC. This is a book I’d probably recommend reading a physical copy of for the best experience.) The actual plot is a bit hard to describe– and, besides, I think this is the sort of book where it’s best to go in blind– but it follows our protagonist, Flora Goldwasser, as she falls in love with her older history tutor and subsequently decides to leave her prep school in Manhattan and follow him to Quare Academy, a Quaker school of about 30 students in upstate New York.

Even though the story has no real narrator– although present-day Flora does add some asides in between documents occasionally– I really got a sense of who Flora was through the correspondence she sends to her loved ones. I loved reading from Flora’s perspective. She is definitely not a standard quiet, reserved YA protagonist. She’s loud, opinionated, brash, impulsive. And I loved her for all of these qualities. At first I thought she was going to be a typical manic pixie dreamgirl type (seriously, she only wears vintage clothes, lives in Manhattan, and followed a boy she barely knows to a school she didn’t even want to attend), but she redeemed herself over the course of the story. She made some enormous mistakes, but she really made the best of every situation she got herself into. I just love reading about YA protagonists who are loud and impulsive… because that’s who I was as a teenager. One thing I appreciated was the way she acknowledged and checked her own privilege (and also how the people around her weren’t afraid to call her on it).

I also loved the cast of characters who went to Quare with Flora– they were all so different, and they all taught Flora different things and helped her on her journey of finding herself. She went through such immense character growth over the course of this story, and a lot of it was brought on by Quare. Flora’s day-to-day life at Quare was hilarious and stereotypical and made all the more funny through reading her own accounts of the weird things she witnessed in the letters she wrote to her friends and family back in Manhattan. And this is totally nerdy, but I also loved reading about the coursework at Quare. It was so feminist and progressive and intersectional. I was here for it. The school setting played a large role in the story, as opposed to simply standing as filler.

I enjoyed the Miss Tulip side plot, too. I’m trying to be vague– because spoilers– but I was really curious to see how all of that would wrap up, and the ending did not disappoint. In fact, I loved the ending of this book so much. It was a bit ambiguous, but it was done so well.

All in all, I applaud Jenny Fran Davis for managing to pull off such a peculiar story in such a fantastic, smart way. Everything Must Go is a book that I find impossible to describe, but if I had to summarize it in three words, they would be: witty, feminist, surprising. I highly recommend checking this one out if you’re looking for YA contemporary with excellent feminist commentary and a story that might surprise you in the best way.

Flora has developed quite a crush on Elijah, a photographer. He calls her his muse and created a blog full of pictures of her that's gone viral. In a bid to win his heart, she decides to spend her (high school) junior and senior years at the world's hippiest, crunchiest boarding school: Quare. (It's where he went to high school and where he is supposed to spend time as an artist-in-residence. Except--surprise!--after learning Flora is going, he decides not to go after all. And now she's stuck.

This is a fun and feminist novel that deals with friendship, first love, kickass ladies, guys that mostly suck (that's especially you, Elijah) and fashion. It's a lot to cover and it does it supremely well.

I picture Flora as sort of a brunette version of Grace Kelly in Rear Window (I think the comparison would please her) and I like her so much. Yes, she seems a little trivial at first but even when she's in love with fashion, she's still smart. And it's not betraying feminism to love clothes. I like her style, even though I personally relate more to second semester-Flora.

This book is an absolute delight and I hope you pick it up. Recommended.

I would recommend this as a quick light read or for vacation or summer especially. Flora was quite an interesting main character and had my interest! It was quite a unique read which I really appreciated.

I received an ARC of Everything Must Go by Jenny Davis, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

As of this post, the book had not yet been released.

There is plenty to unpack here--most of which I won't be able--but because I have only just finished reading, I am still processing the evolution of Flora Goldwasser. I could wait to write this later, but I'm afraid I'd lose the rawness of my thoughts.

Who is Flora? Flora is what some might call "extra".

Upon meeting her, you get the impression she took the long way around to "finding herself". The story is being told, in reverse, using notes, letters, emails, magazine articles, and memos.

The correspondence isn't only from Flora, but others considered pertinent to the telling of the story.

At 16 years of age, Flora has fallen head over heels in love (lust) with an artsy photog named Elijah Huck. Everything that follows, from the point of their meeting, tells the story of Flora's growth and evolution. Prior to that, despite whatever idea she has of herself, she is simply a girl who finds a pleasant distraction in a cute boy:

It wasn't that I needed his approval to exist. Even in this time of frissons and jittery stomachs, I knew my power without Elijah. I didn't need him to kiss me. I just really wanted him to, and that wild desire made my body feel like it was on fire. Let's be honest. I was in love, and it was the kind of love that made me forget myself.


Elijah ignites a passion within Flora. The two work on a project together. Once the project ends, Flora decides to leave her rich New York life behind to follow Elijah to an exclusive (and unconventional) school in upstate New York.

However, when Elijah changes his plans and opts to go elsewhere, Flora decides to stay at the school--a place that shies away from all things trendy and modern in favor of connecting with more rooted ideals.

How Flora comes to grow--as a direct result is being surrounded by people who aren't impressed with living lives centered around materialism and social acceptance of gender norms--is the crux journey.

What she finds out about herself is the prize.

I enjoyed this book. I don't consider myself a feminist in the radical sense, but I do recognize the power in owning who you are--sexually and emotionally--and a lot of this book is about understanding one's primary role in the overall scheme of things.

How do you define who you are as a woman? A man? What defines the type of person you'll become? Who's responsible for YOUR narrative? Are you subscribing to what you want or what you think others want/expect of/from you?

All of these questions, and more, entered my mind as I read this book.

There were too many characters, and too much going on, to truly do justice to this book here. You really have to read it for yourself to understand.

I enjoyed seeing the various perspectives of each and every one of the female characters: Dean seemed the most the most in-touch with who she was, while Sinclair and Juna offered the reader a different embracing of their own femininity.

Elijah, the main antagonist (of sorts), opened up plenty of questions regarding the role the patriarchy plays in man's fear of intimacy and sexual inadequacy.

The very things Elijah seemingly is against, are the very things he (inadvertently) comes to embody: his objectification and rejection of Flora only lend further proof to how much further he has to go.

Even more, the character of Wink also calls into question the role powerful women play in the patriarchy. At least, she did for me.

Like I said, lots to unpack, and plenty of discussions worthy of having once the final page is turned.

The prose (or lack thereof) was a negative, for me. I would have liked to have seen more prose. Emails, letters, and magazine excerpts succeed in telling the story, but were also a bit of a distraction from it at times as well.

That's the main reason this book received four stars.

Witty and unique, 'Everything Must Go' is contemporary YA's answer to 'Illuminae' by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. The epistolary novel for the 21st century!

So not what I was expecting! At first glance, I didn't think I could like a story about a privileged girl in a school where they talk about social constructs, feminism, and the like but I really got into Flora's life. She was this smart rich girl that loved fashion and was infatuated with an older boy. She learned so much about herself that she moved beyond that image. Very unexpectedly lovely and some phenomenal writing.

Flora becomes a fashion icon when she meets this older boy who's tutoring her and happens to be popular online for his photography. ... An older boy taking pictures of a girl that's younger than him and highly impressionable... yeah if that isn't a bad sign for what's to come for Flora, I don't know what is... Anyways, she's so enamored by his charm that she decides it's a good idea to follow him to a new school she really doesn't know too much about because if she did, she would have never gone there. The boarding school is basically like living Amish, very progressive, independent, but not down with anything that makes Flora, Flora. Needless to say, she has a tough time fitting in and worse of all, Elijah, our charming photographer, never shows up. Ah, how she learns so much about Elijah and his ways. Oh, how I wanted to strangle that man child.

I enjoyed that the writing was comprised of emails, journal entries, letters, and website articles. It's not something you read everyday. Actually, nothing about this story was anything like I've ever read or have ever seen being marketed for YA before. There's something about this unique story that drew me in. The characters, Flora's conflicts, and the way Flora learned so much about herself or at least started to explore who she is surprised me. It's a very unexpectedly likable read. Honestly, I've been so tired of the same old thing in YA where the mysterious boy turns up and is the only one the MC can talk to and blah, blah, blah. Everything Must Go was funny and refreshing. It did end strangely but I felt like I went on a journey with Flora and that's kind of what you want when you read a book. This is Davis' first book so I'm expecting a lot more great reads from her in the future.

Everything Must Go is hilarilous and wholly original.

This book was something else. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the blurb and the cover intrigued me as I clicked through the net gallery listings. When I saw the "told in series of letters" bit, I knew it was something that I had to try to check out.

The book is about a young woman, Flora, finding herself. She does it in a very weird way, but as the story unfolds you (as the reader) can see the change in her.

As I read the first part of the book, I read Flora's voice with that obviously fake British accent, kind of like Madonna does sometimes. Flora is an upper east side Manhattan private school obsessed with fashion, but the fashion of the late 50's early 60's-- very Jackie Kennedy. Her crush/ mild obsession with her history tutor/photographer Elijah reads exactly like something like that would read in my high school diary. I mean, it was just so relatable. Would I have applied to go to a somewhat ridiculous artsy private school in the middle of the woods to be close to a guy? No, but for Flora, that choice felt like something that could happen.

There are parts of this book that feel a lot fantastical, but then, it's written in journal entries and emails by people who over exaggerate and love drama. So maybe the narrative isn't exactly what happened, but that's how Flora wants to tell them. Once the slightly ridiculous stuff starts to happen, as a reader, I was so used to how Flora spoke and saw things that it wasn't that big of a deal.

I liked the Miss Tulip subplot. I think it balanced Flora's life before Quare and after Quare. It's a great reflection of the end of the book to the start of the book.

The other characters are also fun to follow. Especially as Flora begins to see them outside the view she comes to Quare with. There is a "no shell speak" policy at Quare, which means students can't talk about how people look. Flora enters the school as someone who definitely is very into the shell and not much about what's inside, so as she grows, reading how she sees people is interesting. It's a first impression versus actually talking to people kind of thing.

I had some issues with formatting. Part of it is personal preference, and part of it was probably that I wasn't used to how things look in an e-reader, and truth be told I read about 75% of this book on my phone which probably messed up the formatting a little bit. I feel like it a physical copy of the book the spacing will be different. Some of the journal entries seem to butt up against each other when I would think they'd be on a different page. But, again, I did read most of this book on an iPhone, so the formatting isn't going to be perfect.

Overall, I loved this book. If you like coming of age/self-discovery stories, this is a book to look out for in the fall. Flora's character is a very interesting one, and I found the format of this book different and interesting. There is also a bit that could very much read a slight to Lena Dunham, which I'm all about not giving praise to Lena Dunham.

I read a lot of books where the main character is a shy introverted outcast girl. Because those are the books that are being written and there is nothing wrong with those characters of books, Flora, however, isn't that kind of girl. She's shallow and thinks very highly of herself. I wouldn't call her a mean girl exactly, but she's definitely the kind of person that would look down her nose at a middle-class person. However, she wasn't depicted as annoying, I mean, she a little annoying in the beginning, but when you start to imagine people complexly, they change a little.

This book was great, and I appreciate the opportunity to read and review it from Netgallery. I hope that Jenny Fran Davis has more books in the works because she's an author to look out for in the future.