Did you read choose-your-own-adventure-style books as a kid? All This & More by Peng Shepherd brings back that interactive reading experience.

Marsh is in her mid-forties, and to her dismay, life hasn’t turned out the way she hoped. When she wins the chance to star in a new reality TV show that promises to use quantum physics to rewrite her life as many times as she wants until everything is perfect, she can’t pass up the opportunity. Every choice she makes leads to a different path, with new options and unexpected outcomes.

What an intriguing story! I loved Marsh and found myself rooting for her to make her dreams come true. The choose-your-own-adventure format was a unique twist for an adult novel, and I especially enjoyed how the secondary characters remained part of her life in every iteration, no matter how drastically things changed. Early on, it becomes clear that something sinister is at play, and unraveling the mystery as the story progressed made for an exciting read.

I won't be reading this. I've tried multiple times and haven't gotten into it. Thank you though for the opportunity. If I read it in the future I will come back and change this review.

Couldn't get through this one which is disappointing because I loved The Cartographers. I think maybe this one would be better served by reading in print. Just...right book, wrong time, maybe? I do like Peng Shepherd and will continue to read more of this author's work though.

All choices have consequences

At the age of 45, Marsh looks back on her life of careful choices with regrets. What did playing it safe get her, after all? Her marriage is crumbling, she's becoming more distant from her teenage daughter each day, and her career has basically plateaued. Would things be better if she had made different choices along the way? She gets the opportunity to do just that when she is selected to participate in "All This and More", a worldwide broadcast phenomenon which uses quantum computing to return contestants to pivotal moments in their lives so that they can make different decisions. Will these new choices take Marsh down a path to a perfect, or at least a happier and more fulfilling life?
Who amongst us has never taken stock of their life and mused, "Hmm, I wonder..."? I was intrigued by the premise of this latest novel by author Peng Shepherd, as well as by the plot device through which the character explores her choices. The reader is a part of this mechanism, in a "Choose Your Own Adventure" kind of way, which could cause a little introspection on their own life as they make choices for Marsh. Weaving themes like personal choice, identity, and regrets over the path not taken, it is quite a thought provoking journey. Is happiness achieved by making the right choices, or is it by how a person adapts to and accepts the consequences of the choices they have made? I give Ms Shepherd high marks for innovation and originality, but overall I found the mechanism proved to be a distraction from my fully enjoying the book. That will not necessarily be the case for all readers, that is just one reader's (my) perception, so take it with the proverbial grain of salt. I also found Marsh a bit trying at times (again, just one reader's take), and for me that detracts from my overall impression of a book every time. All in all, I would give the book a solid 3.5 ⭐️, rounded up to a 4 given the ingenuity displayed by the author. Readers who have enjoyed Ms Shepherd's earlier books as well as fans of authors like Kate Atkinson, Erin Morgenstern and Matt Haig may want to give All This and More a try. My thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for allowing me the opportunity to read an early copy of this story in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of All This and More by Peng Sheperd. This was incredibly creative and I'm looking forward to seeing what else Sheperd can put together!

While I did not love All This and More quite as much as I loved Peng Shepherd's earlier book, I did find this interesting and I enjoyed the "choose your own adventure" style premise. I will almost certainly continue to read the author's books.

Having loved the author's previous book I jumped on this one. What a fun ride! It is, for most, a novel with an unconventional and difficult structure. For me, it combined the fun of a choose your own adventure story with the hilarity of a reality tv show. Shepherd made sure to insert plenty of twists and turns so that whatever choices the reader made, it was one that kept you guessing. Definitely recommend a physical copy of this one.

In this creative novel, a woman wins the chance to rewrite every mistake she’s ever made. But there’s a twist: The reader decides what she does next to change her destiny. Marsh is a recently divorced housewife who is questioning many of her life decisions. When she is given the opportunity to participate in a reality show that would allow her to alter her past choices, Marsh jumps at the chance. However, as the season progresses, cracks start to appear – fragments of memories blur into new timelines, mysterious texts appear on her phone and pathways meld into one another. I loved Choose Your Own Adventure books as a child, and this ode to them is very well done. Shepherd’s exploration of regret and our tendency to look back on our past with rose-colored glasses is a delight. This book will appeal to fans of choose your-own-adventure stories and reality TV, unique storylines, and those who loved The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.

Marsh — short for Marshmallow because she’s “so sweet and soft” — hates her nickname but goes by it anyways.

“No one even remembers my real name anymore,” she explains. “As soon as anyone hears Marsh, that’s all they remember. Because I’m so nice.”

After her marriage falls apart and a disastrous attempt to reconnect with a high school ex, she gets a once in a lifetime opportunity to fix her life through quantum bubbling, a new technology that feels almost magical. In the safety of the bubble, a million paths lay in front of her: What if she hadn’t quit law school to have a family, never broken up with her high school sweetheart, and actually traveled like she always wanted? She could have all this and more, and she’s allowed to experiment until she finds the life she wants and make it hers. Just one catch: she has to do it all live for a reality tv show.


Book cover for “All This & More” by Peng Shepherd. Photo courtesy of Harper Collins.
In Peng Shepherd’s “All This and More,” the titular TV show unfolds as a choose-your-own-adventure style novel, but it soon becomes apparent that Marsh (and the reader) is not as in control as she seems. No matter what life she chooses, certain details remain the same. Her coworkers and boss are always played by the same cast of characters, scenes keep repeating, and she always has a pet named Pickle. Is it fate? Or is something else going on?

As a premise, it’s clever. And in execution, it grapples with some of the deepest fears that we all live with: that we’re not making the right choices, maximizing our potential, and that if only we’d made a different choice at some point in the past, life would be better. In a world of infinite decisions and a comparable number of possible regrets, we all wonder what could’ve been. Everyone went to school with someone famous or was almost right there when some potentially world-altering event happened. How can we ever know we’re in the best of all possible worlds?

In the beginning of the book, Marsh is skeptical of being chosen for the show.

“There are people in jail for crimes they didn’t commit,” she insists even after the host, Talia’s reassurances, “Parents who have lost their children. Patients dying of terminal illnesses. Why was I chosen over someone like that?”

She’s just a random woman who’s had bad luck with love. And she’s got a point. She’s the kind of everywoman we all know but who doesn’t really exist: a middle aged woman, unhappy with her life, chaotically self-sabotaging despite her best attempts to get it together. Talia says her relatability is off the charts, but maybe it’s more than that. Marsh works as a protagonist not because viewers (and readers) can relate to her and see themselves in her experience but because she represents someone who’s failed to have it all in a more disastrous way than most people can imagine for themselves. For a readership that is likely to skew young and female — like reality TV audiences — maybe it taps into the anxiety stewing for young generations who have been told we’re supposed to have it all. And despite allegedly having it easier than previous generations, find that we still can’t.

Shepherd is a masterful world builder, and, as usual, readers are in good hands. The book scratches the same itch as “The Midnight Library” while adding enough twists and turns to keep readers engaged during the outlandish paths. Where many books with multiverse-esc premises start to drag halfway through, Shepherd is self aware and plays with the genre through live chat commentary literally emblazoned on Marsh’s eyes.

“All This and More” might check a lot of the same boxes in terms of genre or premise as other books this year, but it's in a class of its own. As is typical with books that explore alternate lives (see “The Husbands”), Marsh falls into the consumerist mindset of never being satisfied with the life she’s in. Despite the fact that her life is leaps and bounds better than she started, she starts to think she’s always just one more path, one more redo away from everything falling perfectly into place. But unlike other books, this is not the central tension of the story.

In the U.S., reality TV has long been a platform to litigate social norms, especially around dating and relationships, on a national stage. What behavior is acceptable? What behavior are we not going to accept as a society?

In recent years, this conversation has migrated into social media. People don’t need to wait for the next season to spill the tea anymore, it’s available 24/7 with a swipe of a finger. This has implications for entertainment and who people are having these conversations with.It’s no wonder that when it comes to reality TV based books, “All This and More” is in good company this year: “The Villain Edit;” “Made for You;” and others all play with the reality TV format.

But the use of the choose your own adventure style brings the reader closer to Marsh. Whether readers choose to power through and read the book more like a traditional novel, or actively make choices that will bring Marsh closer or further to her goals, no one’s initial reading experience will be the same — even down to the ending. The first thing readers will want to do after finishing the book is flip it over and start again.

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Bookish Thoughts: I’m not sure why I waited so long to read this book. I was pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this book! I could not put it down. I feel like this novel was definitely underrated. All This & More reminded me of the books I read in my childhood where you get to choose what adventure the main character gets to experience next. I felt giddy when author Peng Shepherd allows her readers to choose which adventure the main protagonist gets to experience in All This & More. How clever! I paired the ebook with the audiobook, which was phenomenal.

Described as a choose your own adventure novel of sorts, the premise of All This and More is an absolutely fascinating one, dealing with a new reality tv series that allows a contestant to live out their wildest dreams each season. But I struggled with getting invested in the story and the characters. After absolutely loving Peng Shepherd's previous works, The Book of M and The Future Library, I found this one somewhat less engaging and less immersive. Tonally it felt like a departure from the two aforementioned works and a bit more like The Cartographers, which I also had difficulty getting into.

This was a 2.5 for me, almost a 3. I think the concept was somewhat unique and interesting, I always like it when an author tries to challenge conventional formulas and change it up a bit, and Shepherd surely did this with "All This and More," but it's pros would also become it's cons as in the unique formula became somewhat repetitive because we were always going over the same event, albeit from different perspectives, which when done right this trop can still work without feeling too repetitive but in this case I really felt the drag of the repetition. Things got a little too confusing and hard to follow, which would've been ok had I been more invested in the story and characters but being that I wasn't that made the repetition drag on and on and on. The writing itself is still very much above average, Peng Shepherd is an author to watch as I very much loved her previous book, Shepherd has very interesting concepts and I think she's talented enough for me to give her another chance after not loving this at all.

I was also not the target audience, as I am not a fam of magical realism.

I enjoyed the premise and the structure of this, but ultimately I felt like it didn't quite come together as well as I wanted. I felt like the stakes for the character needed to be higher.

I loved The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd and was excited to read her next book. I loved the premise of the book: a woman gets the chance to go back and undo every mistake she’s ever made. The reality tv show setting was timely and I loved the uniqueness of the choose your own adventure format.

I loved this unique storyline in this book. It was almost nostalgic. This was so much fun to read!

What do you even say about a book like this? On one hand, it was incredibly unique with a fast-paced plot and some really interesting scifi details, but on the other hand the story left so many unanswered questions and plot holes. I loved it and I hated it at the same time.

I think the device of the "choose-your-own-adventure" wasn't as effective as it could have been. One of the draws of these stories is that the end outcome is entirely dependent on the choices you make, and that wasn't the case with this book. I personally think this would have been a better book without the gimmick.

I was definitely interested in Marsh's story and the cool scifi details, but I just felt like they weren't fully explained. I felt like this book left so many loose ends and it was very unsatisfying. It wasn't as if the loose ends were purposeful, because I got the sense that the author wanted this to feel like a complete story, which made it even more annoying.

This was my second book by this author and my second time with the same complaint. Her editor is doing her dirty and needs to take a deeper look at all of the threads to make sure they get tied up by the end.

2.75 stars rounded up

I loved this book so much: I RAN to the nearest bookstore to purchase this book as soon as pub day hit. I found that this book reminded me of THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY….but better and less shallow/generic. I finished most of this book within 24 hours. Incredible plot and story-building. Sci-fi but make it relevant to this mom-of-two-kids who chose to stay at home. This one was all up in my alley and I did not mind one bit. I in fact liked it a lot and have been racking my brain to understand how choose-your-own-story books work bc does that means there’s at least 50% of the book that I have not read? The characters are so well-thought out and translate to paper so well. I felt like I knew Marsh, Dylan, and Ren. I also really enjoyed the ending - all 3 endings. I loved how it all came together at the end.

Peng Shepherd is back with her third inventive and compelling novel, which focuses on a woman who wins a chance to re-do all of her past mistakes and reinvent her life. But is it too good to be true? Shepherd’s imagination is on full display in this cracking Choose Your Own Adventure tale.

Before I had even look at the blurbs about this book, I had, after reading the synopsis, thought the book had major The Midnight Library vibes. That is exactly right - but with major "Choose Your Own Adventure" style points thrown in as well. Unfortunately, this book is ultimately not in the same league as The Midnight Library. It is a unique concept that just seems to drag on a little too long. Also, one section, about the failure of her marriage just seems out of place. I wanted too like the book more than I did.

Who wouldn't want a chance to re-do things, to right the wrongs, to make crooked paths straighter? Great premise, but I got a bit bogged down in places and just plain confused at what was being re-done in others.