An incredibly quick read that follows our protagonist Gilda through her struggles with anxiety, hypochondria, and deep thoughts about death. Gilda is an unemployed lesbian atheist who quite literally stumbles into a job at a Catholic church. She learns that the previous church receptionist has died and becomes obsessed with learning more about her death. I found many things hard to relate to about Gilda, but the fact that she always means well endeared me to her.

I was expecting dark humor, but found this book just to be pretty dark. Although I enjoyed Gilda’s observations and the ending, the rest of the book was just ok to me. I also felt that the ending (which was the best part of the book) was way too short compared to the rest of the story.

I imagine there will be many who end up loving this book and will find it much lighter than I did, but this just wasn’t for me. Thank you to Atria and Netgalley for providing me with this ARC.

Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. She responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Gilda is hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace . Not only did Gilda does not correct this mistake, she also comes across an email correspondence with the receptionist old friend and begins impersonating the dead woman via email. Everything changes when police discovers suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace's death and now Gilda is in trouble.
For me this was not something new, felt like a mix of other books I've read and not the type of funny I was looking for.

Thank you to #NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. #EveryoneInThisRoomWillSomedayBeDead

This book was over-rated, depressing and not for me. It had the potential to be more humorous but was executed poorly. I cannot and will not recommend this. Disappointing.

Thanks to Netgalley, Emily R Austin and Atria Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 7/6/21

Just when I'd cried my heart out from reading a few historical novels came the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book, and the timing couldn't have been more perfect! I needed the laughs this story offered!

I have to preface this by confessing I loved Gilda, our main character, because of the little quirks that made her relatable to me but may be difficult to understand for others. Gilda suffers from depression and anxiety. Being in her head was exhausting, but at other times, such a realistic perspective (coming from someone who has suffered from depression) of the chaos that can take place in one's head. Gilda is also extremely witty and genuinely lovable, and the situations she gets into/imagines made me audibly laugh on more than one occasion. I also love a good mystery, so it is the perfect combination when you add some quirky, lovable characters. I highly recommend this book to anyone.

Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book has funny moments, but overall it’s not funny like I was hoping it to be.
In fact, it was just really sad. The sadness drug on throughout the pages.
Gilda has a lot of problems. I do like how the feelings of depression and anxiety were touched on in real ways, Gilda has strange thoughts. Sometimes the sentences are short, and sometimes they are run on, but besides seeing the inner working of her mind, I felt like I didn’t really get to KNOW Gilda.

The cover and the title of this story drew me in, but the story just kind of let me down.
I wanted more from Gilda and more FOR Gilda.

I was hoping--perhaps fooled by the cheerful cover and cheeky title--that this book would be a little heavier on the humor part of dark humor but it really wasn't. The main character is a dark cloud who can't seem to speak up for herself in even the most innocuous of situations which set off a bunch of events. It wasn't a bad book but Gilda had so many problems it was a drag to read.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a book about anxiety and depression and life.

Gilda is a 27 year old atheist lesbian who can’t hold a steady job due to her anxiety. One day after seeing a flyer advertising free therapy sessions at a catholic church, she goes there with the intention of getting some help but is mistaken for a candidate seeking employment as a receptionist. Desperate for a job and too anxious to correct this mistake, Gilda goes along with it and is hired on the spot.

I absolutely loved this story and really enjoyed Austin’s writing style. The story is written in a way that feels like all your innermost thoughts are being spewed out on pages. From random, short sentences to long, overflowing ones; it really helped the reader perceive and digest information the way our main character, Gilda, did.

Gilda is a character who is always thinking about everything and nothing. She cares so much for the people around her and even those that she’s never met. This is what leads to her obsessing over the receptionist she’s replaced; Grace, an old lady who died under suspicious circumstances. Gilda is a thoughtful, endearing and unintentionally funny character. In her attempts to make everyone around her happy, she ends up lying and keeping secrets. Soon it’s all too hard for her to keep up with and everything seems to spiral out of control all at once.

This book was absolute perfection, I enjoyed every minute of it!

I loved and hated Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead simply because of how relatable it was. I’d never read a book from the perspective of a character that has quite the same feelings about death that I do, and it was both a terrifying feeling but also comforting that I’m not so alone in my fears and feelings. This book held a good depiction of someone who has anxiety and depression, and how it effects daily life, internal monologues and human interaction.
Like the main character, Gilda, I too can tend to ruminate about death, and how scary it is. It’s an uncomfortable feeling when it’s also something that is inevitable for both you and your loved ones. This book just felt real, and it felt raw. There was dark humour thrown into the book as well, which complimented the book nicely and provided many laughs. I recommend this book to anyone that can appreciate the small but remarkable thing that is life, relationships, and mental health.
I do want to add that this book can be quite heavy at times and I might not recommend it to someone who is really struggling, as it might be triggering! Thank you to Netgalley and Atria books for providing me with an eARC!

"I stew intensely with the reality that I am a living, breathing thing that is one day going to die."

Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead tells the story of Gilda, a lesbian atheist who accidentally gets hired by a Catholic Church to replace a recently-deceased administrative assistant. Daily life & human interactions are incredibly difficult for Gilda, due to her mental health challenges and her growing preoccupation with dying. Life suddenly gets even trickier when she becomes a suspect in her predecessor’s suspicious death.

"A tornado could tear me from my seat and pitch me into the sky. I could have a stroke. I could be crushed in a tsunami or an earthquake. I could get rabies. I could drown in an undertow... Given all the ways to die that are already looming over me, I have to worry about psychopaths, too?"

By the time I was 10% of the way through the book, I had laughed so hard that I’d cried all my mascara off. Not just those little blowing-air-through-your-nose chuckles; I’m talking full-belly, full-volume, head-thrown-back cackles, with actual tears dripping off of my cheeks. No book I’ve ever read (and this was my 150th book in the last 11 months) has ever made me laugh this hard.

"I don’t have the right personality for customer service. A customer once asked me if I was really an employee of the store, or if I was just three possums in a trench coat."

But underneath all the humor, this book manages to be such a deep and moving portrayal of life with depression and anxiety. I was moved to tears (the real kind) more than once as I considered how painful it must be to live in constant fear of dying; to have parents and siblings who are at best uninterested in, and at worst demonstrably inconvenienced by, your very existence; to be perpetually held back from developing strong relationships because of your own mental health challenges.

"Of course I’m a fraud. The fact that I’m able to carry myself through life without being crushed beneath the psychological weight of being alive proves that I’m a con artist. Aren’t we all con artists?"

Emily R. Austin’s writing style here reminded me a little bit of Nothing to See Here or Happy & You Know It - darkly funny, probably deeply offensive to religious readers, with surprisingly meaningful themes hiding just below the surface. (Imagine if How Lucky or Anxious People had been written by April O’Neal from Parks and Rec. There’s good stuff there, but you’re going to have to dig through quite a few layers of deadpan stares and horrifyingly morbid sarcasm to get there!)

"Ignorance is bliss, Giuseppe, have you ever heard that? If you ever find yourself feeling particularly blissful, take a moment to appreciate it’s probably because you are incredibly stupid."

—-

A huge thank you to Emily R. Austin, Atria Books, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Gilda is a 20-something lesbian who accidentally finds a job as a secretary at a Catholic church. She's not terribly close to her parents, her alcoholic brother, or her casual girlfriend, and she's dealing with some pretty nasty anxiety and depression.

As someone who also suffers from anxiety, some of Gilda's observations are spot on, and funny indeed. However, this is not a funny or uplifting book. It felt very heavy, and while I appreciate that Gilda doesn't find some magical cure for her problems, I wanted her to find....something. I don't feel like she even really wanted help or to feel better, she's kind of made peace with what she thinks is quirkiness but is actually a bad mental health problem.

A laugh-out-loud tale that throws humor in your face and then makes you question why you got the giggles in the first place because this is a serious, heavy-hitting novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is not to be taken lightly. Gilda is a regular at the hospital's emergency room - she knows something is wrong, but she can't put her finger on it. Because she's cried wolf so many times, it seems a lot of people have given up on her, making her depression spiral worse and worse. But she knows she needs help, and when she gets a flyer for counseling at a Catholic Church, she goes in search of relief but comes away with a job. And she's a lesbian. But for Gilda, that's just another secret she has to keep. She hides a lot - her feelings, her dirty dishes, her identity. And the thread that ties the story together is that Gilda wants to get better, but she has no idea how to do it.
Expect Holden Caufield vibes, dark humor, and thought-provoking social commentary.

On one hand, some of the lines really resonated with me but on the other hand, this book is told in four parts and in fragments. It makes it not really cohesive though it's not hard to follow and is a quick read. Some of it is is just Gilda's thoughts and actions. She has her witty moments but she deals with major anxiety and depression.

Thank you to Isabel from Atria books and Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Gilda is an atheist lesbian who, in my opinion, has some of the worst luck of any character I’ve ever read. She also has overwhelming anxiety that engulfs every aspect of her life. With those two things in mind, she tends to just go along with whatever happens to her because she’s too anxious to do anything but that. An example of this: she sees a flyer for “free therapy”, it ends up bringing her to a church, and then the priest asks if she’s their for a job interview. To which of course she says yes and now she’s an anxious, atheist lesbian working as a receptionist for a Catholic Church. From there, the book takes you on her journey working for the church, whilst also dealing matters in her personal life like her girlfriend and her family. This book is written in 5 parts and really has no chapters, which I actually ended up really enjoying because every few paragraphs, it would change to a different day or a different scene. There are also flashbacks to Gilda’s childhood too which I really felt grounded the story for me and made me really understand Gilda’s depression and anxiety. This book is not a happy book by any means (as you could probably tell from the title), but it does have this interesting quirky vibe thrown in with some dark humor and existential dread that overall become a very very fun read for me. I related to Gilda in ways I was actually scared to find out and I honestly never would have thought about these things if it wasn’t for this book. If you are the kind of person who loves reading about anxiety riddled queer people just existing in the world, I would highly recommend you pick this up when it comes out on July 6th!

I found Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead to be a very relatable and at most times uncomfortable depiction of living with mental illness. The book follows Gilda, a 28 year old lesbian as she accidentally begins working at a Catholic Church. In my experience at least, translating mental illness into interesting story telling that doesn’t sensationalize the experience is incredibly difficult. How do you make something so physical and emotional read on the page without ascribing misplaced meaning? The book approaches this problem by giving us a series of small scenes, each broken into sections of the Catholic calendar like Advent, Lent, and Ordinary time. These vignettes allow us to live in the moment with Gilda and process her thoughts as she processes them. For most of the book I felt trapped along with her in her thought spirals, but also in how much she cares about the people around her. I found that care and how difficult it is to translate it to the world around her to be one of the most compelling dynamics of the book. Despite living entirely in Gilda’s head, I felt there were a lot of ways that she as a character was obscured to me. I kept wishing I could pop into someone else’s head so I could get a better perspective on how other people perceive Gilda. But also I can respect why the author wouldn’t do that, and how this closely mirrors the experience of what it is like to be anxious or depressed.

As someone who grew up Catholic it was really fun to revisit that world from an outsider’s perspective. It is such a specific world, and I felt like I was transported back to the days where I used to go to Church. The author is great at demonstrating that weird balance of love for Catholics have for members of their community with disapproval and fear of people outside. It is definitely something I have struggled with in the past and it was really fun to watch someone else navigate that dynamic.

Overall, I really appreciated this book. It was a little slow, and the mysterious death of the woman who had Gilda’s job wasn’t as much of a through line as I thought it would be.

Thank you to Atria Books for the ARC!

Poor Gilda, she is so anxious about everything that it practically paralyzes her. After getting into an accident that she can’t quite remember, she ends up at her frequent hangout, the ER, this time with a truly legitimate reason: an injury. She takes a job as a receptionist after the previous one dies, at a local church even though she’s an atheist, and she certainly doesn’t want to tell anyone at work that she’s a lesbian. But the previous now-dead receptionist receives emails from an old friend, Gilda can’t help herself but responds, pretending she’s the former receptionist and still alive. Gilda’s anxiety increases with each lie she tells, both to herself and to others. This is a laugh out loud funny and moving novel about identity and what it means to make an authentic human connection. I would recommend this to readers who love Marie-Helene Bertino, Jen Beagin and Katie Williams. Thank you to Atria Books and Netgalley for the advanced review copy.

I actually enjoyed this story about a young woman with an incredible amount of anxiety. It’s kind of like watching a train wreck unfolding but it is a fast read. Besides mental illness, alcoholism, homosexuality and the Catholic Church are other topics included in this story. If for no other reason, read this to validate your own sanity! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

This is probably one of the more unique books I’ve read in my life. It was very easy to get through and get interested in the story. Most of it is an inner monologue, but you never really root for the protagonist. You just want her to get some help from someone and cringe when she continues on her same journey. And, I think that is kind of the point. Mental illness is not romanticized in this book at all. This person is struggling. This person can eat, sleep, bathe, etc. This is reality. It isn’t always pretty. That doesn’t make it any less important

I loved the representation in this. I to as well as many others can relate to anxiety. I also have, not an obsession like gilda but an interest in the. Macabe and dark.. Once I started reading I couldn’t stop. Gildas dialog with herself is pretty erratic which i can also relate too. The author writes this so well it makes me wonder if they also experience some of these things or if the writing is just that good.. The family dynamics and personal relationships she tried desperately to connect with is another thing i relate too. Highly recommend this book for certain people that just want to be understood and want to read and relate to what they are thinking and going through.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc

I absolutely adored this book! It's quite humorous and not for the faint of heart Catholic. I saw ratings referring to this book as dark which is just my preferred level of dark humor. I love the way the book explores anxiety, creating a very real picture of what it is like to live with anxiety while also highlighting just how "ridiculous" anxiety is. This book is irreverent and deeply human.

Gilda is quirky. Gilda is depressed. Gilda is beyond frustrating.

After reading the description for Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, I expected a stark but humorous view of a young woman struggling to navigate day-to-day life while battling a mental illness.

Austin’s novel does not shy away from the daily thoughts that accompany depression and anxiety. Gilda’s frequent narration of her panic spirals often sent me into my own anxiety. However, Gilda has no redeeming qualities. She is reduced to her illness, and the abrupt and somewhat ambiguous ending gives no hope for the reader to relate to the potential “ups” of depression. After a drawn-out narrative and supporting characters who are developed only superficially, the ending felt rushed and bleak. There was no humor in this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this novel.