All I Ask By Eva Crocker

Rating: 2.5 / 5 Stars

Publication Date: 8/4/2020

** Thank you to Netgalley, House of Anansi Press, and of course, Eva Crocker, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.


All I Ask follows 26-year-old Stacy, an aspiring actress. She works odd jobs here and there and lives with her best friend, Viv, and her boyfriend, Mike. Once they decide to move on to their own place, Stacy lives in the apartment with Holly, a girl she has only recently met. One morning, the police come in search of illegal digital material. As Stacy is home alone, she needs to deal with everything, while the police take every electronic device owned by Holly and Stacy. This leads to the paranoia that the police are watching her.

So here are my issues - I did think this book had a promising start. It was something I was excited to read and I was pulled in right from the beginning. However, I could not connect with the characters. They were very unlikeable. I was disappointed to see the digital case stay in the backseat of the plot. I wanted more. I also found the book ended on a weird and abrupt ending.

I guess this novel and I were not meant to be.

Couldn't find the voice in this story. It had a lot of promise. It actually had a few good parts but not enough to keep my attention. I would like to read something else by this author in the future. Check it out and decide for yourself. Happy reading!

This....had a good start. Cops bust into a house and take Stacey's phone and computers. What then follows is a rambling diatribe about being poor in your 20s. I did not enjoy this.

It's the definition of navel gazing and the embodiment of the shrug emoji.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

I struggled with this one, to be honest. I liked the parts about the pitfalls of police and finding your place, but struggled it get into the voice.

Ending was very abrupt. Book ok.

Thanks to author,publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free,it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

One of the best and most memorable moments of the entire show Girls was when the creator/lead proclaims she might be the voice of her generations…or a voice of a generation. So here’s the thing…if ever generation is to be given a voice, much like Girls, this novel speaks volumes for the millennial tribe. The confused, somewhat unwashed, romantically challenged, underemployed, wishy washy bunch of people who were raised to believe they were special and can’t reconcile themselves to the world who quite vehemently doesn’t share that belief. Yes, I know, it’s a huge generalization, but just about every millennial I know fits it to a tee and I believe in empirical evidence, so there you go. And so this novel is about one of these young people, specifically a 26 year old aspiring actress who juggles low paying gigs to afford a somewhat impoverish existence in a shabby apartment share. The novel actually starts fairly dynamically (comparing to the rest of it) with the cops busting in, accusing her of internet crimes and confiscating her computer and phone. And to her credit, she manages pretty well without for someone from a generation that is raised with both semipermanently attached to their persons. And from there on the novel sort of ambles around that. The protagonist’s life is revealed through glimpses of past and present, arranged haphazardly without exact chapter limitations to a somewhat confusing effect. She meets and dates a girl, despite only having been with men before, because millennials are flexible that way. She hangs out with her friend. She tries to get her technology back. She eventually comes to realize that maybe her civil rights were trampled on in the process and lukewarmly tries to address that. But lukewarmly is kind of a main note here, the entire thing is like one large lukewarm slice of life that goes on and then just ends. I mean, at random, like the author suddenly decided she’s done. And sure, not every novel requires a precise three act narrative structure, but something as boneless as this certainly might have used one. The thing is the writing itself is actually quite good, the author certainly has a talent for character descriptions (albeit in that all too realistic sweaty hairy sort of way) and an ear for dialogue, but that alone isn’t quite enough, certainly not to give this novel a shape it can maintain or even a curb appeal it can sustain. Much like a proper millennial, this is a shrug of a novel. Decently executed shrug, but shrug nonetheless. A very good generational representation from an anthropological perspective, but leaves a lot to be desired as a novel. Quite possibly this would be entirely more relatable and therefore engaging to a younger audience. Thanks Netgalley.