A really fun and creative plot but the writing itself was tedious and the story ended up dragging. I did like both of the main characters and think that Hitchman has good potential, maybe this book just needed a touch more editing.

“people do live like us. they find ways. with a little money and discretion.”

a lyrical tale exploring the fictional lives of a charming group of queer people in the midst of the second world war but more as a backdrop than as protagonist. this was one of those books where i simply could tell the author pondered over all the words and chose them carefully, beautifully. the characters felt fleshed out, each having their own inner dialogues and secrets and trauma (i suggest checking trigger warnings because there are some depictions of assault). the relationships, not only romantic but all of them felt like they added a lot to the story. reading this was truly a pleasure and it felt like hitchman was offering me gifts all throughout the process. highly recommend!

Vienna in the 1900’s.
Julia, married and living a lifestyle of wealth leaves her husband for a tailor. The tailor however, is a woman named Eve. As they traverse through their new life, they are not prepared for the obstacles, the difficulties and the issues with acceptance. Along the way we meet Rolf who is smitten with Emil, who is engaged to Isabelle. The entanglements of their lives clearly showcased the trials, pain and emotions shared in their search the lives they had hoped to live.
The characters were well developed and I enjoyed the storyline. There were some places in the second half of the book where I felt a change in pace and direction but overall it was nicely done with a great plot.
Thanks to NetGalley and Serpents Tail for an ARC in exchange for a book review.

I was surprised by this book! It took me a little bit to get into it but I became attached to the characters. The pace picks up a little more than half way through and I’m not sure that the first part of the story needed to be given so much space, except perhaps to show the arc of the characters’ lives over a period of time covering pre- WW2 to immediately after the war.
I think this might be the first Holocaust book I’ve read that has gay characters. The impending events are murky in the background then come ever closer into view, without hitting the reader over the head, the way some Holocaust books do. I appreciated the subtly of it— it’s probably one of the more accurate and least dramatic portrayal (except for the kidnapping, which seemed to serve as a plug for a plot hole that needed to be resolved) of events I’ve read, everything being fine, until one day, things are not fine but no one wants to admit to themselves that things are getting progressively worse.
Above all, this is a story about found family that loses each other, then finds each other again. Without each other, a postwar existence might not have been possible.

ETA after looking at another review that said the book opens with the kidnapping, I had to go back and re-read that part. I don’t know if I skipped the prologue or if I just don’t remember reading it, but I think my original assessment holds— this book is not about the kidnapping, though it does it’s job of making the plot logical.

I started this book not really knowing what to expect, but I can never turn down a LGBTQ+ historical fiction. And once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I was obsessed with reading about the struggles faced by Julia and Eve as they flee from Julia’s husband to be together, their hardships as they try to find work and grapple with the fact that it’s nigh impossible for them to have their own child. After a long period of focusing solely on the two women, the story diverges and gives us more narrators: most significantly Rolf, their friend who tragically falls for businessman Emil, and Ada, Emil’s cousin in love with his fiancé. While some readers have found that this first half of the novel was too much time spent setting up the real story, I adored this section as it slowly culminates in the main plot, and I found myself mourning for it after a big time jump around the halfway mark. Needless to say, the latter half was still enjoyable; just focused on different characters and changing perspectives. I also appreciated the ending scene, which gave us a sense of closure that I was dreading the novel would lack. Due to its Second World War setting, the novel could have ended in so much more tragedy, and I was glad that the author largely spared us from the tale of constant queer suffering that so many have relied on before. While the plot did seem inconsequential at times (and while I would have liked to have seen more of Eve’s inner life), overall I found this novel to be a thoroughly engaging read.

Disclaimer: I received an electronic advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. I was not paid or otherwise compensated for this review, and the opinions contained herein are mine and mine alone.

I struggled with how to review this book. There are certainly some parts of it that I enjoyed (the chapter describing the earlier life of Frau Berndt, the landlady, as well as some of the scenes centered on Rolf). However, I have to echo the sentiments of some other reviewers here, in that it feels like the first major section of the book is bit longer and moves a bit slower than it needs to. Contrary to some of the other reviewers, I think I actually enjoyed the latter half-to-third of this book more than the beginning; at the very least I found those versions of the characters more engaging.

Beatrice Hitchman has created some interesting characters, but does not grant them all equal or proportionate focus. We are treated to scene upon scene (upon scene, upon scene) illuminating Julia's inner life, but Eve receives a fraction of that same attention. This, despite the fact that while Julia and Eve are both lesbians in Vienna in the early 20th century, Eve is butch, and dresses and carries herself in a masculine way! That confluence of sexual identity and gender presentation is an underexplored theme in contemporary fiction, to say nothing of historical fiction! And yet all we hear about Eve navigating the world of early 20th century central Europe as a butch lesbian from a working-class background is when Julia (or, in some cases, Elsa) describes or remembers instances of passers-by or mean children making snide comments. The character just felt underutilized to me.

I appreciate that Hitchman's narrative is so positively filled with gay characters (and some who may be bisexual or sexually fluid), and furthermore that many of these characters are given the space to be more than one-dimensional tropes. I just wish that they were allowed to be a little happier. Almost all of these characters have multiple significant reasons to be stressed, be they economic, personal, interpersonal, social, what have you. That's great for characterization, and does a lot to inform us about how each character moves through the world, but I feel like I read a lot of scenes where someone was anxious or worried or melancholy with no countervailing positive emotional force. Hitchman may not have buried her gays in the grave, and for that I am thankful, but (especially in the first half of the book) it did feel like she buried them in their own emotions.

This is a solid read with a lot going for it. It may be one of those books which is better upon a re-read than an initial read, and I'm definitely open to suggestions as to why I should like this more or less than I do. Overall, this is a decent work of LGBT historical fiction.

The intricate storyline in an extensive timespan of this novel makes it worth reading,. The many characters weaved makes it a little scattered and hard to follow, but the concept is good.

Thank you NetGalley and Overlook Press for giving me the opportunity to read this.

I received this book for free for an honest review from netgalley #netgalley

I have a little trouble getting into this boat but once I did it set off like a rocket. Lgbtq writing that really made it smart classic in the making to be sure.

All of You Every Single One is a beautiful story.

There were definitely parts of the plot I felt could have moved faster or flowed better together, but overall I just enjoyed reading about the characters and the culture of Vienna during this time period. I found it to be a great book overall.

Thank you to the publisher and to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC to review!

If I step back from the various woven narratives, this book reads like a gay Love Actually set in early 1900s Austria, which is a really cool idea! The interconnectedness of found family and community was a great concept to explore.

I enjoy myself some historical fiction now and then, something that really pulls you into a certain time and place, and there are parts of the story where the scene is set quite well - yet something was missing. The intro chapter started quite descriptive of the setting, but I had no idea what was going on until the last bomb dropping paragraph. Oh, so this book is about stealing a baby? Not what I expected from the description but okay. Still, the lead is buried in the intro. And overall, the book isn't about stealing a baby. At all. That doesn't happen until way, way later. And it's not even the most important part of the book.

For a little over 50% of the story, I have no idea what the book is about, really. Julia wants a baby. Eve doesn't. Rolf is a swindler and Emil is a bad tempered fellow. Heidi and Gunther just had a baby and are sleep deprived. This scene setting probably shouldn't have taken half of the book, as there isn't much of a story there. People do things. Meander from one activity to the next. At some point some people do a very bad thing and steal a baby, without consequences, so even that doesn't matter much.

Before baby stealing, there's no action, no villain, no conflict, no plot. People are moving about their lives but nothing happens. Something is going to happen, I'm promised, but halfway through the book I don't believe it anymore. Oh, 59% and things start getting real. Okay here's an interesting story now, seeing what happens to this group as the Nazi regime rises. You have a group of interesting characters and an adversary. That's a story. Everything that happened before? Not much of a story.

Character wise, I'm into it. Julia and Eve are yin and yang and make a great pair. Rolf acting as their gatekeeper into Vienna's gay scene was very cute. If you never had a Rolf for a friend, I'm so sorry. Emil and his wife Isabella are mismatched, of course, and the dynamics at play with their relationship with each other and Ada are tragic. Yet inserting Dr. Freud into the narrative is a cool twist - I've never seen Freud portrayed as a character before, so visits to his office were rather fun.

Maybe I'd enjoy this book more if the story was written in 1st person instead of 3rd, or if the plot wasn't dragging for the first half of the book. Cut out a lot of the first half, add more in about what happens to a few characters near the end who don't get enough attention in the post-baby stealing Nazi era, and boom, fixed. Once I hit the second half, I couldn't get enough! I needed to see what happens next.

All of You Every Single One takes place in the early 1900s in Vienna and primarily focuses on the lives of the three pairs of people as they face the difficulties of identifying with the LGBT community prior to the second World War. Julia leaves her husband and her wealthy lifestyle to runaway with Eve, a tailor that she has fallen in love with. Both of them learn quickly how difficult life can be when their lifestyle is not fully accepted by others. Rolf, a fried of Julie and Eve's, has fallen for Emil. and believes that they could live a life together despite Emil's engagement to Isabelle. Ada is Emil's cousin that we learn early on has been abused by Emil and has found comfort with Isabelle.

When I saw that this book was a historical fiction with LGBT, I jumped on it so fast! I thought it would be the perfect start for Pride Month! So this book starts off with a bang. A baby is being stolen by a mysterious stranger and we see Julia leave her husband to start her new life with Eve. I'm not sure at what point this book started to become difficult to finish, but it was definitely before the 50% mark.. I just kept glancing down at the percentage thinking "I have HOW MUCH LONGER?!?!" This had nothing to do with the characters. I thought they were developed well with their individual personalities and struggles (Especially Rolf! He is my spirit animal!). The story was fine, but it just seemed to drag on and on for me.

All in all, it was not a horrible read. I fell in love with many of the characters, but I just wanted a little more from the story.. but also less?

I want to thank Netgalley and the Overlook Press for a free eARC of this book in exchange for my honest reviews.

I received a free e-ARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I decided to read this book for Pride month. Among the other LGBTQ+ books out there, this one doesn’t stand out for me.

This story follows two lesbian women in Vienna during the 1900s and shows the trials that these women went through during their time together. The story alternates between Julia and Eve to give each side of the story.

For me, the story dragged on and therefore it was cumbersome to get through.

First of all, thank you NetGalley for the e-Arc of this book.
When I first got the book, I was really excited to read it but I put it off for a couple weeks because I wanted to read it in Pride Month. And so I started it at the start of June and finished it today.
Overall I would probably give this book a 3 star. But that would also be a stretch. There are many reasons for it. I loved reading about two women and how they lived their lives in early 1900s. But I think that's about it. It was dragging for me and also some plot felt so confusing to me. I didn't understand this many characters. So it was all very confusing for me as a whole.