I had such a hard time with this one, and I think it was because my copy was unedited, a lot of words didn't have spaces between them, a lot of sentences didn't have spaces between sentences, pages were just run on page after page, a chapter would start in the middle of a sentence. It was just a headache to read it, and that made me have a hard time following a long. I tried redownloading it, but it was the same. I understand ARC's can be undedited and aren't final versions, but it's probably one of the worst copies I have ever gotten from netgalley.

Aside from that, the story itself was good, it was told in the point of view of a little girl who's name I don't even know cause its so weird, effee or something. it's spelled weird, it's pronounced weird, and I already forgot what it actually is because it's not a name that was easy to remember, its a unreliable name for an unreliable character, which only made my headache worse while reading it. The story itself though was good, a lot of details about things are lost, because it's in the point of view of the little girl, through her interpretation of things, as she tries to solve the mystery of her brother, you find out what is going on by reading between the lines and by the explanations of the adults around her, but like I said, my copy sucked, so the reading between the lines was literally really hard.

I think if I had a better edited copy, and the main character's name was different, it would have been an easier read, and I would have liked it way more.

I had a hard time staying interested in this book. The story was a good one but the writing style got boring from time to time.

I liked this book. I thought the author did a fantastic job with nailing the point of view of a six year old girl who was the main character. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for review.

The story is told by a six year old, so it's interesting to see the author's viewpoint on how a six year old would think and speak. But it does make it more interesting, as the little girl tries to solve the mystery of her missing brother. It's sad in places and also funny in places. A good read.

I’ve recently finished reading the book ‘All that’s bright and gone’ by Eliza Nellums. This book is due to be published on 10th December 2019! This is Eliza Nellum’s debut novel and is written through the eyes of a six year old as the family deal with their issues and mental health. It may give the reader a glance at the possible inner mind workings of how a 6 year old sees the ‘adult’ issues, the conclusions they draw and the way they deal with it.

I know my brother is dead. But sometimes Mama gets confused.
There’s plenty about the grownup world that six-year-old Aoife doesn’t understand. Like what happened to her big brother Theo and why her mama is in the hospital instead of home where she belongs. Uncle Donny says she just needs to be patient, but Aoife’s sure her mama won’t be able to come home until Aoife learns what really happened to her brother. The trouble is no one wants to talk about Theo because he was murdered. But by whom?
With her imaginary friend Teddy by her side and the detecting skills of her nosy next door neighbor, Aoife sets out to uncover the truth about her family. But as her search takes her from the banks of Theo’s secret hideout by the river to the rooftops overlooking Detroit, Aoife will learn that some secrets can’t stay hidden forever and sometimes the pain we bury is the biggest secret of them all.
Driven by Aoife’s childlike sincerity and colored by her vivid imagination, All That’s Bright and Gone illuminates the unshakeable bond between families–and the lengths we’ll go to bring our loved ones home. 

www.averagebooklove.home.blog

This was such a cute, fun read for me. This is told from the POV of six-year-old Aoife (pronounced "EE-fah") who is trying to put back together her very broken family. Aoife's mom is in the middle of what appears to be a mental breakdown, Aoife has a, seemingly imaginary bear named Teddy, and her brother Theo is gone. Her uncle Donny comes to try and put the pieces of Aoife's life back together while supporting his sister as best he can. If you loved any of Fredrik Bachman's novels (especially "My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry"), you will eat this book up. It's a quick read that's charming and heartwarming. I breezed through this book and just adored the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of All That's Bright and Gone, which is set to release December 10, 2019.

This story was different than most that I read. It comes from the perspective of a six-year so at times it made it a bit difficult. But. all in all it had a notable plot so it made it different than the ones I usually read.

This book had me hooked from the very first sentence. I loved that it was told from Aoife's POV, getting into the mind of a 6-year-old with such difficult subjects is fascinating and really <b>made</b> this book.

I loved the journey Aoife's took us on and I'm also proud to say that I can properly pronounce her name without stuttering in my head now. Hallelujah!

I did have a couple of issues with this book, mainly that a) not a lot happened and b) the plot twist was predictable and boring. I had a theory as to what was going on which (if I do say so myself) I think would've been much better than the actual truth.

Other than that it was pretty enjoyable, but nothing revolutionary.

Told through the eyes of a 6 year old, All That is Bright and True is a story about the good, bad, and ugly that is family. There is a lot going on here, but it still rings true, even when it probably shouldn't. I enjoyed this twisty, imaginative story, that takes a unique approach on the family drama genre. Topics touched on include, mental health, sexuality, religion, death, and family stepping up and stepping in when they are most needed. Thank you NetGalley and publishers for an advanced digital copy of this novel.

this book is told from the perspective of a 6 year old girl. This made the story more interesting. Aioffe tries to solve the mystery of her brother's murder. It's a sad story with some funny moments.

I feel for Aoife. She has a name that is constantly mispronounced, is misinformed about her brother’s death and her family as a whole. Aoife is so poor that she and her mother have crackers and water for lunch.. When her mother has to stay in the hospital for “confusion”, Aoife’s uncle comes to live with her. Fortunately, he is able to provide her with a stable environment and a full refrigerator. Her constant companion is Teddy....a bear that only she can see. Determined to find her brother’s killer, Aoife uncovers surprising information about her family I received an advanced copy of All That’s Bright and Gone by Eliza Nellums,and am voluntarily supplying my review.

'There is a woman who is crying in the corner, real quiet. I don’t like it when grown-ups cry. Most of all I don’t like it when Mama cries.'

Aoife (pronounced EE-fah, which the adults never seem to get right) is caught up in the confusion and chaos of all the grown-ups around her. She understands the meaning of gone. Gone is forever, gone is DEAD– just like her big brother Theo. She knows better than to talk about it or ask questions, he was murdered and Mama can’t stomach the grief. She has a vague memory of him, one day on the beach, she was lost and he found her, but it’s all so muddied. Luckily for Aoife, she has a constant companion, Teddy who isn’t imaginary no matter what people say! She can see him clear as she sees her best friend Hannah, so he is real! He is a bear! It isn’t smart to talk about him though, especially not to the ladies Dr. Pearlman sends from sea-pee-ess. Sea-pee-ess are government people that help families, but if you say things that seem weird they might take it the wrong way. One thing is certain, the adult world is confusing! Theo's murder isn't the only mystery, her whole life feels like one.

Siobhan (her Mama) has gone away, but she isn’t gone away like Theo, she can and will return at some point. Something is wrong inside of her and it all goes back to the day she broke her own rule of talking to people who aren’t there. Mama was so angry, yelling at her dead son. The doctors just need Aoife’s help trying to understand the incident, and looking for someone to take care of her while Mama is away. There is no daddy for Aoife, she is special, she was born in the cabbage patch, it’s a fact- her Mama told her! There is an Uncle Donny, her mother’s younger brother and he tries his best to care for her (after all, he is a single, childless bachelor) but he can’t keep Aiofe from running off with Hannah, trying to gather clues and weed out suspects of her brother’s murder.

Uncle Donny knows Mama’s sickness is confusion sickness. He understands the deep disappointment Aoife feels, Mama promised to take her to see the fireworks this year, but if she’s away she won’t be able to go. He also understands and says it’s okay if she doesn’t always miss Theo, but any mention of her brother is met with “let’s not talk anymore about Theo today.” No one ever seems to ever want to talk about him. Hannah gets secret messages in dreams, Hannah is older and is going to be a detective one day. She can talk about Theo to her! Hannah even dreamed about him. Can she solve the crime still if Hannah abandons her? Soon, Aoife begins to wonder if her family really is crazy, like people say. But the church has saints and the holy ghost, that’s not crazy.

Could Mama’s friend Mac be a killer? He is sort of strange and angry. All she wants is to escape to the Secret Place that Teddy discovered. Teddy is trying to tell her something, all the time, but it doesn’t make sense. Uncle Donny is doing his best with Mama gone but he isn’t the greatest looking after her. What if the big bad man comes to drag her off to the Children’s Prison like Hannah warned her would happen?

Everything is happening fast, adults are telling her things that she can’t comprehend, the story of her family is different than what Mama has told. What if she is ill, like her mother, maybe Teddy isn’t real! Even he is starting to scare her. Is she crazy? If memory is tricky, it’s a foreign language for a six year old. In the interest of protecting the innocence of a child, adults often aim for silence, which leaves an imaginative kid like Aiofe to construct a world so far removed from reality that what she believes to be concrete fact is more painful than the truth. Mental illness swims through the story, it’s disheartening because there is no doubt Aiofe and Sibohan (her mother) love each other, but she slips away when the meds are wrong and the stresses of life are magnified when you also have to cope with your health. The world is often kinder if your illness is physical rather than mental, not to say it’s easy either way, but the stigma of mental illness is cruel when children catch wind of it. Worse, there is always the looming threat that if Sibohan can’t keep it altogether, Aiofe can be taken away! Our little Aiofe, at six, is becoming aware of what society deems normal vs. abnormal and just where her family fits. There is hope, and I think Uncle Donny beautifully explained what being sick for Sibohan means. Sure, you may not be cured, but you can be treated to live with it better. I like that, that’s reality.

I was surprised as much as Aiofe by the revelation of what happened to Theo and I felt as frustrated and confused as she did. There is this strange span of time when you’re still not fully present, your mind is just giving birth to reasoning, it’s developing and you are learning to distinguish between emotions, facts, and fantasy. This is where Aiofe is. I especially like what happened with she and Hannah, because kids can be fair-weather friends sometimes and mean as snakes not because they’re terrible beings, but because they are immature. It made the story far more genuine. Well done, this will be released later in the year, add it to your December TBR list.

Publication Date: December 10, 2019

Crooked Lane Books

This was a very unusual but very engaging and interesting story - even if I didn't always buy that it was being narrated by a six-year old... I have a six-year old. A VERY precocious, verbose, clever six-year old (if I may say so myself) with a sharp mind who seems years beyond her age much of the time. So I'm familiar with Aoife's breed (and more than a little partial to it). Fortunately for us all, our story is NOTHING LIKE HERS - beyond the presence of the aforementioned six-year old. But even accepting that trauma can age a child, I struggled to keep reminding myself that the self-aware (and even in her childish misconceptions she was always that) narrator of this incredible tale was a child...

I can see where some readers may lose the story in that. I didn't - and was surprised, because I usually don't take to adult stories with child narrators because most authors have a difficult time finding the right tone or voice that balances the linguistic/observational skills of the child with the necessary revelatory requirements of the narrator. Nellums did the best job I've ever seen at walking that wire, and if it occasionally required me to forget Aoife's age for the sake of the narration, it did so in a fairly seamless and non-disruptive fashion that deserves a lot of credit. But that's not all she deserves a lot of credit for - she also deserves it for telling an original, engaging, entertaining tale that is about a child but also about the more fundamental need we all have to understand, to be loved, and to find our truth in the midst of the misunderstandings, protections, and secrets of those around us.

This is a lovely and heartbreaking story that genuinely surprised me at multiple turns. Aoife is a delight and the magical realism that edges her world was brilliant, offering just the right mix of magic and confusion and acceptance of whatever comes that is the hallmark of childhood. Nellums wrote a beautiful paean to family and love here, and she did it without preaching or sappiness or tropes. The story folded in on itself like origami, with each fold seeming a bit random but adding up to a marvelous "AHA!" at the end. I loved it and am definitely keeping Nellums on my watch list...

I completely feel in love with Aoife! The author carefully crafts a distance between what young an naïve Aoife reports seeing and what we as the reader understand, making for a really poignant climax as Aoife unlocks the secrets around her brother's death. Fans of Mark Haddon will appreciate Aoife's wonderful narration, which is beautifully done. I would thoroughly recommend for any fans of mysteries!

This book was an quick and unique read! I have never read a book narrated by a 6 year old but it makes you see the story from an interesting perspective. This book was full of adventure and emotion as well as twists and turns. The ending wrapped it all up nicely but I wish it talked about the hearing. All in all, a nice, easy read!

I loved this book it hits you with the feels that a Picoult book does.
I love the character of the little girl. This is a heartbreakingly beautiful novel.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for letting me review this book

A 6 yr old girl narrating her story
of a brother who has died and of her mother who has been locked up due to mental illness. She goes on a few adventures to find out info abt her family with her make believe bear,Teddy. Great book, couldnt wait to get to the end! Thanks Net Galley!!

How do you not love Aoife (pronounced EE- fah)? Aoife is the voice of this entertaining and delightful read. She is six years old. Precocious, endearing, determined and driven by how much she loves and adores her mother. The characters in this novel are illuminated with details that pop them from the written page. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this highly pleasing and heartfelt book on every level. Do yourself a favor, read it.

REVIEW
Eliza Nellums' All That's Bright and Gone is an engaging story told from the perspective of a six-year-old girl, Aoife. Her world is turned upside-down with the murder of her older brother and missing her mother with her being in the hospital. She's staying with her Uncle Donny, and she's got her imaginary friend Teddy by her side. She's got a mission to make sense of her world and put things back together again. This book is challenging, but heartwarming as well. This novel will appeal to fans of Fredrik Backman and Mark Haddon.

PRAISE
“A luminous debut. Eliza Nellums’ six-year-old Aoife (pronounced ”EE-fah“, if you please) will knock you cock-a-hoop. A hero’s journey, with possible angels, ghosts, and Teddies. It will change forever the way you look at the little girl next door.”
—Alan Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of the Flavia de Luce mysteries

“A gripping and affecting debut that will leave you laughing. Prepare to fall in love with this beautiful mystery and six-year old Aoife. Eliza Nellums is one to watch.”
—Rhiannon Navin, international bestselling author of Only Child

AUTHOR
Eliza Nellums is a member of the Metro Wriders and has a Masters degree from the University of Michigan. Raised in the Detroit suburbs, Elizabeth now lives with her cat in Washington, DC where she is the manager of a grants program at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Her short story “Changelings” was published in the anthology Magical. All That’s Bright and Gone is her debut novel.

Thank You NetGalley for the free ARC. A story about families and how things can go wrong and how sometimes a relative has to step in a fix it all told from the perspective of a child.