What a premise! A "locked room" whodunit with six suspects who are all locked in one person's head.

The first thing to know about this book is that it is about Dissociative Identity Disorder ("DID") or "multiple personality disorder" as it is more colloquially known. The basic premise of the book is that the protagonist, Caroline Grand, was sexually abused by her father, and developed six distinct personalities. When a murder occurs it seems likely that Caroline was the culprit, but was she? And if so, which personality did it?

If you don't like books on multiple personalities you might still like this book. I found it was done much better than some of the more cliched mysteries featuring this theme. I could tell that the author either did some serious research or had a very creative mind, because these personalities co-existed in a way I had never read before. Some of them can see and hear eachother and they know they are all living in the same body. They view eachother as brothers and sisters with birthdates. All this was new and fresh to me and made the premise extra interesting. The author does an incredibly good job distinguishing all the characters' voices from eachother - much better than most multiple narration books in this genre. There was never any doubt as to who was speaking and the personalities were distinct and interesting.

I really liked the first 3/4 of the book and was totally riveted by the personalities and their unique voices and coexistance. I liked the ending fine but had a few nitpicks with it that I won't go into from here due to spoilers. Despite some reservations about the ending, overall, this was a very interesting and original book that I would definitely recommend, especially to people who like psychological thrillers.

Thanks to NetGalley, A.F. Carter and Mysterious Press/Grove Atlantic for this totally original ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Carolyn Grand is not an "I" - she is a "we." Afflicted with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) stemming from horrific sexual abuse in childhood, there are six different people inhabiting Carolyn's body, none of them actually Carolyn. These personalities include Martha, the dour motherly figure of the group; Victoria, prim, proper, and put together; Serena, the head-in-the-clouds dreamer; Eleni, the sexual temptress; Kirk, the only male out of the six; and Tina, who is stuck in the mindset of an abused 9 year old child. Together, they make up Carolyn Grand's psyche in all of its manifestations.

A.F. Carter's All of Us follows Carolyn's personalities in the aftermath of an unfortunate encounter with the police, which finds Carolyn receiving state-mandated therapy to determine if she is suitable to live independently. Carolyn's therapist is nefarious and judgmental, not quit believing that Carolyn has no control over her numerous identities, and he seems to be doing her more harm than good. Furthermore, when Carolyn's father Hank Grand, a sexual deviant who used a young Carolyn as the star of child pornography films he produced, is released from prison, she finds herself being stalked by him, wreaking havoc on her mental stability. When Hank soon ends up murdered, Carolyn naturally finds herself as one of the prime suspects. But are any of her personalities responsible for the crime, and if so, which one?

All of Us is an unconventional, yet engaging novel that explores the ways that childhood trauma manifests itself in adults. With that being said, All of Us is not an easy, nor enjoyable book to read. Rather, I would classify it as interesting and revealing. The book contains several descriptions of the abuse Hank afflicted upon Carolyn as a very young child, making this novel quite unsettling, stomach-turning, and triggering. It should be obvious that this book will not be enjoyed by everyone.

Looking past the instances of sexual abuse, I did appreciate the way Carter worked the multiple personalities into the novel, switching the character POV in each chapter as a new personality took over "the body." This plot device proved to be very disorienting and sometimes confusing, helping the reader experience what someone suffering from DID deals with on a daily basis. All of Us is a solid and intriguing read, yet not one that I wholly enjoyed, hence my 3 star rating.

My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Content Rating: 18+
Genre: Fiction, Thriller
Published: June 2, 2020, by Mysterious Press

All of Us is a noir thriller with an unnerving psychological twist. A.F. Carter takes the reader deep into the fractured mind of Carolyn Grand. Since early childhood, Carolyn has endured horrendous abuse at the hand of her sick, twisted father, Hank, and then she suffered at the hands of her foster family. As if that is not enough, Hank also exposes Carolyn to his pedophile friends and films them.

“I have no memory of my father, now in prison, or of his sadistic friends. Nor do I remember Benny Aceveda and his wife, the foster parents who rented us by the hour.”
Martha

Carolyn’s mind copes with this trauma by splintering into six distinctly different individuals, each with their own unique personalities. Carolyn Grand suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), sometimes called Multiple Personality Disorder or Split Personality. I loved that the author took a murder mystery and added this unique twist.

All of Us is told to us by each of Carolyn’s personalities. These six different personalities work together and have enabled Carolyn to have a reasonable life. She still struggles and needs help from the state, but she can live on her own. Carolyn Grand’s people are the makeup of Martha, Victoria, Serena, Kirk, Elina, and Tina, who have their particular purpose in protecting Carolyn both physically and psychologically.

“Our past is imprinted somewhere inside the brain we share, but Tina alone has access. If that saves the rest of us a lot of pain…”
Martha

I won’t explain what each person does for Carolyn, as that would take away the fun of reading the book but know that A.F. Carter does an excellent job in the development of each character and perfectly showcases the internal struggle between each of the personalities.

“Victoria and Martha want to eat me, me and Eleni, to swallow us down, to digest us, to empty us from their bowels, to flush us away.”
Serena

Everything is going along “normally” until Carolyn hears that her father will be released from prison. Upon release, he starts stalking Carolyn, she reports this to the police, but they are unable to do anything. And then Hank is murdered.

A.F. Carter leads us down a well written suspenseful path that leaves us wondering and yes, hoping if any of Carolyn’s personalities were capable of murdering Hank. These six characters/personalities were all so well developed, and I became attached to all of them. The pacing of this book was well executed and kept me on edge throughout the whole book. If you like the thriller genres, All of Us delivers that edge of your seat reading with a unique twist.

* Please note the quotes in my review are subject to change once the book is published. *


** I kindly received this galley by way of NetGalley, publisher, and author. I was not contacted, asked, or required to leave a review. I received no compensation, financial or otherwise. I have voluntarily read this book, and this review is my honest opinion. **

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of All of Us by A.F. Carter.

I'm going to start this out by saying that I think to write a water-tight story about a person with multiple personalities would be hard. The disorder itself is super complicated, and often a result of a traumatic background, which adds more layers.

I definitely appreciated the spin that the author took, and the underlying suspense, but for the most part it was just too messy. To have split personalities and a timeline that switched back and forth was just too much for me. It became so switchy-shifty that I begun to lose interest because my brain was tired of keeping everything together. But I very much liked the idea of the story.

I liked this one. Easy to read and a decent story. I'd read further books by the author. I'm rating it 3/5 stars.

Who D.I.D. it?


Having studied psychology in college when this book came to Netgalley I rushed to request it. This type of mystery is completely up my ally. So, thank you to all parties involved in my getting a copy of this book. A.F Carter you have a new fan with me I really enjoyed this new twist to a thriller so thank you. Carolyn Grant had been subjected to extreme and horrible sexual and physical abuse from her biological father, then by the foster family, she was sent to. Even after she aged out of the system, she continued to be exploited by others around her. She had fractured into several different people all sharing the same body, all with the goal of surviving one day at a time. Their lives are put at risk when Eleni the rather promiscuous personality gets picked up by the police and their freedom is questioned. The story takes an even more interesting turn when the father who abused Carolyn for so many years is paroled after serving a large part of his sentence. I don’t want to give two much of the story away but I will say someone does die and we don’t know who did it until the very end.

This is one of those novels that will do well with book clubs and friends because it opens the discussion for mental health. I love how the author treats the subject with respect and gives the reader a proper insight on treatments. I enjoyed that the separate personalities had a great deal of details and independence to them. Who I hated was the psychiatrist that the court appointed I will say that I enjoyed that he made all the personalities work together to better support the collective but that is about all I liked of him. Overall a 4.5 star read. I will continue to support this author in the future because I enjoyed the original concept.

You will not forget this book anytime soon. Maybe it's the well paced plot. Or it could be the fascinating characters that emerge from within Carolyn. Or it could be the tense suspenful story. It could be a mix of everything to put together an amazing book that I just couldn't put down. An absolute must read. Pick up this winner of a book now. Make sure you have plenty of time because it's unputdownable. Happy reading!

Novels featuring characters with multiple personalities disorder are few and far between so I was quite intrigued to read one. But this book isn’t just about someone who has several different identities — rather, it’s a murder mystery. Could one of the personalities have committed the crime and the others do not know? It’s certainly a unique twist on the murder mystery genre.

Carolyn Grand, if such a personality even exists, has split into six distinct identities - Eleni, Kirk, Martha, Victoria, Tina, and Serena. Because they are not aware of each others’ experiences, they write memos detailing what’s happened so everyone knows everything. This behavior is in sharp contrast to how they behaved before.

...we’ve drawn closer together. The memos on the table prove it.
Before.... we almost never cooperated. We schemed instead, our dysfunctional family dedicated to assassination. We plotted to kill each other off.

Each personality has its own unique perspective and experiences — they are each a distinct identity with a different role to play. In other words, it is as if the personality has been split into six disparate parts.

“... in my conversations with Victoria and Martha the subject of function came up several times. Martha maintains the household. Victoria is Carolyn Grand’s public face. Two others I haven’t met also appear to have set functions. Eleni’s tasked with satisfying Carolyn’s sexual needs. Tina remembers so that the others can forget or at least claim not to have known in the first place. So Serena, and please take your time, describe your function. Tell me what you bring to the table.”

“‘Color,” I tell him. “My job is to supply color.” From a distance, I hear Victoria applaud. “And do you succeed?” “Of course. The gray of our lives is sequential, flowing from light to dark, so that a single yellow rose in the center is a thousand yellow roses, enough to light a room.” ...a self rarely in control of the body, a self on the way out, don’t let the door hit you in the ass.”

A. F. Carter does a good job in fleshing out the 6 distinct personalities so that the reader gets to know each of them. It’s interesting to see when one of them decides to have a relationship and some of the others suddenly find themselves in it, like in bed the morning after. The reader is privy to Carolyn’s therapy sessions and the frustrations of the therapist in dealing with six uncooperative personalities.

“Therapy can’t succeed unless patients take responsibility. You tell me you want to gain control, to unify, but then, at every opportunity, you employ your . . . your separateness to excuse your failures. You’re on a merry-go-round, all of you, and you need to get off.’”

The author poses some intriguing philosophical issues, such as does unification of the personalities result in the annihilation of some of them — do they cease to exist?

“Does he realize that integration equals annihilation, that we know ourselves as living independent beings, our right to life as valid as that of the first microbe to wriggle its way through a primeval swamp?”

“I find myself asking a series of questions asked by every therapist unfortunate enough to have us for a patient. Where do I go when I’m not in control of our body? Who am I when I live in a realm called oblivion? Where was I before I came back? Most of all, who or what chooses?“

The book is comprised of short chapters, each titled with the name of the personality to indicate whose perspective it is. It is a fast read that will keep your attention by wanting to know who committed the crime. I recommend this book to those interested in murder mysteries as well as those intrigued with the vagaries of the human mind.

Thank you so much for the advanced review copy! I really enjoyed it and just placed an order online for a physical copy. I’m looking forward to reading other books by this author. Thank you again!

I'm fascinated by dissociative identity disorder, so this book's premise immediately caught my attention. I was looking forward to an intense psychological thriller, but the story didn't quite come together for me.

Each of Carolyn Grand's six identities have narrating parts. While this can feel like a lot, the author does an excellent job of making them each unique and immediately identifiable. My problem was that all the identities are bland, as if their personalities have been stripped down to one or two characteristics. The complexities lie in the person as a whole, but not within the individual narrating identities. Consequently, it winds up feeling like specific traits were plucked from Carolyn and given lives of their own, which is not how DID works.

The plot is engaging, and I was rooting for Carolyn as she fought to keep her independence. The content raises thought-provoking questions about what defines sanity, who gets to decide, and how we treat people whose brains work differently than the norm.

I did feel aspects were overblown, with too many of the people in Carolyn's life being twisted and abusive in some way. I also thought the ending fizzled, where I was expecting a bang.

At a very young age, Carolyn Grand suffered horrible abuses at the hands of her father. As she got older, she developed multiple personalities to handle everything her fragile mind could no longer focus on. All seemed to be in working order, til her father was released early from prison and then murdered. Now, Carolyn has become a person of interest, but each of her personas denies culpability. Could one of them have exacted revenge without letting the others know?
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Sounds like an intriguing read, right?!?  The premise was strong, but unfortunately, the actual details felt unrealistic & did not deliver. Anything having to do with psychology and the mind usually fascinates me, but this book just had too much going on with insufficient depth and I didn't particularly care for any of the personalities or the psychologist assigned to her case. 😔
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With this said, l'd like to add that this book worked well for other readers. Check out other reviews before dismissing it solely based on mine. 😊
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Thanks to @netgalley , @groveatlantic , and #mysteriouspress for the e-galley of this psychological mystery in exchange for my honest review.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

This book contains trigger warnings: paedophilia, sexual and physological abuse, paedopornographia, attempted suicide, murder, prostitution.

Carolyn Grand suffers from dissociative identity disorder, from multiple personalities. She's Martha, the housewife, who takes care of bills and food, Victoria, the public face, put-together, Serena, the artist resident, Kirk, the only "brother", heterosexual, Eleni, the promiscous one and Tina, the nine years old, the only one of them that remember her, their, gruesome past.
Carolyn suffered from childhood abuse. Molested and lease out to peadophile by her own father and then, in her foster family, pimped by her foster parents, Carolyn created multiple personalities, to protect herself, to hide, to function, to endure.
The story, told by the six personalities, starts when Eleni propositions herself to a cop and, when he discovered she was committed, it's decided she should be go to the Kings County Hospital and to talk with the psychiatrist Halberstam. As each one of them wants to live his/her own life, taking control of the body, the six personalities cooperate to not being commited into a psychiatric hospital, but Carolyn's life is again turn upside down when her father is released on parole and contact her. When he's discovered dead, she becomes a suspect. When detective Ortega (who starts to feel something for Eleni), decided to being part of her life, helping her, getting to know the other personalities, Carolyn finds herself overwhelmed and confused, while the reader, while the investigation goes on, asks him/herself, who could have committed the murder? One of her personalities? Or other people in Hank Grand's life, since he was involved in suspicious business and so on?

This book is incredible. The reader swings past from voice to voice, personality from personality, getting to know more about Carolyn's awful life, her past, her trying to endure what she's been through and move on, while fighting against the police's questions and investigation, Dr Halberstam and his games, getting support and help by her neighbour Marshal and then by Bobby Ortega. The plot is a beautiful rendering of Carolyn's life, with her problems, her doubts, her personalities trying to overwhelm one other, hjacking the body to live the moment and so on. It was hard reading about her abuse and her so unfortunate life, since childhood and how, as a grown woman, she managed, more or less, well enough, to function, to live.
It was captivating, thrilling and hopeful at the same time. I really like Carolyn's personalities and each one of them was fierce, brilliant, especially when they cooperate against Halberstam or her father.
This book is written beautifully and the reader finds him/herself/themselves involved in the story and in the investigation, wondering who did that? Until the very end.

An intriguing thriller, it tells the story of Carolyn Grand, who, after years of childhood sexual abuse, ceased to exist. Now her psyche is made up of fragmented personalities, six of them sharing Carolyn's mind. While the personalities are all aware of each other, and sometimes are there at the same time, at other times only one of them is in control of the body, and the others "don't exist".

When Carolyn's father is finally let out of prison after serving a lengthy sentence for her abuse, he comes looking for her. When he is found murdered in a hotel room Carolyn is immediately the prime, but not only, suspect. Police soon have the hard task of figuring out whether one of Carolyn's personalities murdered her father, hampered by personalities that "did not exist" at the time of the murder. So, did one of the six murder their father? Or was it someone else on the periphery?

A quick and easy read, All Of Us is an interesting look into the mind of fragmented personalities. Each chapter is told by a different personality, but the reader is never confused as to which is which, and we come to know each personality well. An original take on the who dunnit, which I have no hesitation in recommending to all lovers of the genre.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

All of Us by AF Carter reminded me why I studied psychology as an undergraduate. It reminded me of my fascination with the human mind, with sanity and insanity (as opposed to mental illness!). Not to mention my early interest in multiple personality disorder (ie. dissociative identity disorder). I blame reading / watching Sybil (the book by Flora Rheta Schreiber; film featuring Sally Field) in my teens.

This book unfolds through the eyes of six protagonists. All of whom share the one body (that of Carolyn Grand, who no longer exists as a character/entity/person).

I know I've read quite a few books about people with MPD / DID (or those faking it like the lead in William Diehl's Primal Fear). But I can't remember instances where we're so clearly put into the mind of the personalities and given such a good description of their awareness (or not) of each other. And I was intrigued by the fact that some share memories and how that translates into the personalities sharing skills or abilities.

So, this book has a huge amount of potential. And though I really enjoyed it, I couldn't help thinking there were a few things missing.

After discovering the horrors of 'Carolyn's' childhood I went searching in case this was a the second book in a series. (TW) There's very brief reference to the abuse she suffers at the hands of her father (and friends), and then foster parents, but no specific detail on the impact on her. Ironically child pornography and sexual abuse is not something we usually want to read about but I felt some more context would have been good as it would have allowed us to understand our characters' nascency.

In addition, the fact that many of the personalities we meet didn't appear until later (when she was in her mid-late 20s) made me wonder what happened before that; and if there were other triggers to their creation. There's reference to a psychologist who worked with the personalities (with some success) previously and unified some but no information as to why they stopped working together or what happened.

Of course the fact this intrigues me so is evidence that I was truly hooked by our characters and invested in their stories. 

We meet 'Carolyn's' current therapist after the book opens. I had high hopes for him and think I assumed we'd see a study of the personalities and their rebellion against being 'killed off'. Their fight for existence would have interested me, but of course this is more of a thriller - a murder mystery.

This book had tremendous potential but I think it tries to do too much. It covers some very complex subjects, which are fascinating and a lot to process, but then throws a whodunnit AND bit of extra intrigue in on top. There were also a lot of holes. It was actually a very short novel so perhaps it's been edited to an inch of its life.

I probably would have liked Carolyn's backstory (childhood, adolescence and young adulthood) delivered in a dual timeline. That way there could have been more focus on the personalities themselves—how they appeared and their purpose—which felt a bit light-on. Again, of course though it's an interesting study into DID, this isn't the aim of the book. 

Very enjoyable despite my own little gripes about 'what I would have liked more of'!

Reference was made to AllofUs by AFCarter as a novel of suspense. It's a doozy! The premise is that Carolyn Grand is arrested late one night for propositioning an undercover police officer during a sting targeting prostitution. The issue: Carolyn Grand is not actually a prostitute and she will argue she was not even present at the time. The offender was Eleni, one of Carolyn's many identities.

Carolyn has a history of complex trauma at the hands of her father, as well as others, over many years. As a result she developed multiple personalities and has a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Each chapter is narrated by one of the identities. There is Victoria, Martha, Kirk, Serena, Tina, and finally Eleni, whose voice interestingly (in terms of having a chapter allocated to her view) does not appear until Chapter 12. As a result of her arrest, Carolyn et al must attend psychiatry appointments pursuant to a stint in psychiatric care. During her treatment Carolyn's father is released from jail, only to be murdered. And guess who is the main suspect?

And so enter the police (again) but this time we meet Detective Ortega who forms an unusual relationship with Carolyn as the reader observes the investigation unfold, as well as Carolyn's battle for power with her psychiatrist, and with her competing identities.

What I liked?
The backwards and forwards struggle the identities had with the psychiatrist.
The pacing - it was a page-turner.
The portrayal of isolation in the every day minutiae of Carolyn's life.
The distinct voices of each identity.

What I didn't like?
This seemed to pigeon-hole survivors and their experience.
The voices of Carolyn's identities though distinct might be considered by some as cliched.
The "relationship" between Ortega and Carolyn given her vulnerability. Again, my belief is this propagated further abuse upon Carolyn given Ortega's position of power in the relationship. This just seemed to violate all ethical and moral dilemmas of modern day investigation and trauma informed victim care. I couldn't stomach it, irrespective of Ortega's own background and motivations.

All of Us is a book that I think will give readers a reaction one way or the other. I think people who love suspense novels are most likely to love this one. It's a quick, fast-paced book with alot happening. I just couldn't get past the portrayal of the extreme abuse of power to be able to say I loved it.

First of all, I searched in every platform I could think of and I couldn't find if the author has DID themselves or not. My opinion of this book would vary very slightly whether they have it or not, but I would like to know nevertheless.

I'm a psychology student and I've invested my fair share of time researching on DID, so in that front I can say the rep was impeccable. There's really not much to say about it because it was just that flawless (which is the thing that made me think that maybe the author has DID). The therapist was meh, as always I have to endure fiction hating us lol

As for the story, the ending didn't sit quite right with me. Too ambigous, too close to falling on the "mentally ill people are scary and they could murder you and get away with it" trope that crime/thriller fiction loves. I loved the rest of the book though! It had the perfect balance between character(s) study and mystery. I haven't read much adult fiction that was able to pull that off.

I loved this interesting thriller. A gréât criminal investigation story with the twist of multiple personalities at its centre. Good read, fully recommend

All of Us combines the complex plot of Split and Sybil with a standard thriller. Did one of Carolyn’s personalities kill her sexual predator father? Or is her therapist manipulating her memories to get her to confess even though she is innocent? If so, why?

Carolyn was sexually abused as a child. First, by her father. Then, by his friends. And finally, by the foster parents she was sent to after her father’s arrest. But the worse betrayal was a former therapist making her watch the films of her abuse that are still on the dark web. That experience broke Carolyn into even more pieces. You see Carolyn has Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). There are currently six distinct personalities living in Carolyn’s body. And Carolyn herself is nowhere to be found.

Using the different personalities as narrators really works to bring them to life as separate characters. Though not accepted by society, Carolyn’s personalities seem like siblings that all provide a service to their single shared life. The characterizations were my favorite part of the book even while they slowed the pace of this ostensible thriller. In fact, except for the rushed finale, All of Us has the pacing of general fiction throughout. If you start reading because you want an enthralling tale and are not expecting a jolt-a-minute thriller, you will not be disappointed. 4 stars!

Thanks to Mysterious Press, Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

The description of this book is what drew me to It. A women with multiple personalities and a murder. I was intrigued. I had not heard of the author but I requested this book just the same. Thank you Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for the advanced copy!!

I really liked this book. It kept me interested since the first page. I started it late one night after finishing another book, and if it wasn't so late, I would have finished it in one night! I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen. Not many books can grip me like that. The history of the protagonist, and what was happening in her life was so interesting to me. I think if you are interested in psychological thrillers, this is for you! I would read other books from this author if they had them!

Carolyn Grant had been subjected to extreme and horrible sexual and physical abuse from her biological father, then by the foster family, she was sent to. Even after she aged out of the system, she continued to be exploited by others around her. She had fractured into several different people all sharing the same body, all with the goal of surviving one day at a time. This is challenged when Eleni, the promiscuous personality propositions an undercover police officer and then is sent to a psychiatric facility and is under protective custody. It’s complicated further when her father is released from prison, and then when he’s found dead. Are any of the six personalities capable of murder?

This is a fascinating concept, and thankfully the dissociative identity disorder is treated with respect and is factually represented here. I can easily see this novel being a book club recommendation because of the commentary on various aspects of life as a mentally disabled person, treatment by therapists using their position for a sense of personal gain, police interaction, and the question of autonomy. Of course, that is an especially fraught kind of life when there are alters cohabiting the same body. There are complications to living a fractured life, and they’re dealt with and explained in the text. Carolyn is the legal name for the body, and she lives a very solitary life. But each of the personalities are distinct and separate, and more than just the splinter that they had formed from. The way they dress, speak, and think are all distinctly different, and the chapters from their POV’s reflect that. Working with the court-appointed therapist forced them to stop jockeying for primary position and instead to work together, and their approaches are as separate as their personalities.

So many of the other background characters are something of caricatures, but that may be an artifact of the different alters’ fractured way of interacting with them. The lawyer representing Carolyn for mental health court is a gem in the system, and warns her regarding the tricks police can use to try to trip her up, which also serves the reader as a warning that things will go sideways. It does, and it’s not until the very end that we realize the truth of Hank Grant’s murder. It’s a bittersweet kind of ending, but fitting overall.