Interesting concept, great cover, but as an editor the writing style was so difficult to follow. Almost every paragraph technically had a run-on sentence and my brain couldn’t figure out how to decipher it all.

This book was beautiful, sad and slow. A true character study of a young girl at the end of the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of All the Water in the World.

I can see other's enjoying this book, but unfortunately it was not the right fit for me. It didn't hold my interested and I wasn't excited about picking it back up so I had to DNF.

This is a did not finish for me. The plot summary sounded interesting when I read it, but the story itself became slow and needlessly depressing.

Dystopian fiction that is extremely depressing.

I’m usually a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction and love to read about survivors and how they create a new world order from whatever disaster has fallen. The premise of this was interesting — oceans have melted due to climate change, bad weather has caused the water to rise and drown out all the coastal cities. The synopsis said that the survivors who stayed in New York City lived on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, that the residents called Amen. I thought the narrative would be about living in the museum and its artifacts and treasures, hunting in Central Park, carving out a living within a really cool building. But it wasn’t. Almost immediately the hypercane flooded them out and they had to leave. Then I had to endure a very long, repetitive, drawn out “on the run” scenario with one dreadful thing happening after another. The story is told from the point of view of a 13-year-old girl named Nonie.

The book was very slow and I considered not finishing it but kept on going because I’m that person who has to know the ending. I’ll not ruin it for anyone who can’t predict what is likely. I guess the main problem with this book is that it was very depressing and not even the author’s attempt at creating sympathetic characters could make it better. So, basically this was typical end of the world as you know it stuff. And I’d definitely say that it had a lot of really boring filler. The author states that it took 11 years to write this book and it felt like about that long for me to finish it.

I was able to listen to this audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. The narrator, Eunice Wong, did an OK job voicing the characters in the book, but it wasn’t compelling enough to change my opinion about the story itself.

This is a climate fiction book. Thankfully it is not trying to demonstrate ways to change the world in real time but rather focused on a family as it navigates this new flooded environment. This takes place in the near future after the weather has converted to these hypercaines as they are described. The humans in this new climate are constantly at risk from catastrophic winds, intense lightning and copious amounts of rain. The coastal areas are all tens of feet underwater. You meet the family and learn they have been living in the American Museum of Natural History (amnh - pronounced like amen) who need to leave and try and join an upstate farming community they believe exists. It claims to be a thriller but it seems rather slow to build and the tension isn't present. It is a journey focused on the perspective of Noni one of two sisters who journey up the Hudson river with their dad and some others. They run into other communities and some obstacles to ultimately share their story. I did not connect with the characters and storyline seemed too simple.

It's been about a week since I finished All the Water in the World and it's been on my mind non-stop. I've always been drawn to post-apocolyptic stories and what they can tell us about the persistence of humanity.

After the world has flooded, Nonie and her family are surviving in a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. They work hard for their small community and to protect the museum's archives. When a superstorm occurs, they must flee AMNH onto the Hudson and encounter many staple New York sites along the way. Throughout their journey they meet other communities and witness how they have adapted throughout the years of turmoil.

This story gripped me from the start. As an art history minor, I often think about those who risked their lives to protect the knowledge, books, and artifacts we still have to this day. I found Nonie's devotion - instilled in her by her family - to protect this knowledge deeply moving.

It was also fascinating to see how quickly the different communities created rules, governing systems, and funeral rituals for themselves.

I could have read 300 more pages of this book. I wish it was longer and felt that the end was a bit rushed to my liking. However, if you like the Last of Us, Station Eleven, or any emotional post-apocalyptic story, this is a must-read.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 / 5 stars or 9 / 10

All the Water in the World is ideal for readers who enjoy immersive and emotionally deep character-driven stories that handle urgent themes of survival and humanity's resilience in a dystopian setting ravaged by climate change.

Would I consider myself one of those aforementioned readers? In a normal scenario, yes. With this book in mind, apparently not.

The focus for the themes of this novel is on familial bonds, and more than anything that drives the story. And the themes are scattered throughout a tale of climate change and museum preservation, told through the point of view of a young girl who has a deeper than natural connection with water in a world that is flooding and continues to flood.

This felt more like a travel/adventure story, because from the very start, the family is forced to leave the museum they've called home for so long and begin a journey to the only other safe place they know of they might can call home. And a lot happens on the journey, of course; they meet a myriad of different characters, dangerous things and people cross their paths, and through it all they cling to each other and the destination they have set their sights on.

This wasn't a bad novel by any means: there was a lot of depth and heart. However, this might have not been the book for me because I often felt like the story was dragging. The pace was very slow for me personally. And I would have liked to have seen more focus on the preservation side of the story, as the author was inspired by the real life stories of of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war. I feel like there was a lot more that could have been said and explored in this regard but the focus kept being drawn elsewhere.

I see this book being great for a young adult audience that is interested in the effects of climate change and natural preservation. For me, though, it was mid and not to memorable.

Special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance digital review copy.

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall is a lyrical saga of survival against all odds in the not-too-distant future of a waterlogged New York City. The story is told from the perspective of young Noni, who has an uncanny ability to sense storms coming and predict their severity. The world is mostly underwater and Noni and her family have sought refuge at the American Museum of Natural History, or Amen as they refer to it due to the sound of the museum's acronym. When a hypercane strikes and finally drowns their final refuge, the group has no choice but to try to paddle upstate to see if their family farm is still in existence. What follows is a bit of a modern-day Huck Finn adventure, but with the post-apocalyptic feel of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Perfect for readers of Jessie Greengrass's The High House, as well as Stephen Markle's The Deluge, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, and Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this lovely, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, story.

All the Water in the World explores a deeply personal story within a hauntingly dystopian framework. Eiren Caffall weaves reflections on family with a broader sense of environmental collapse and societal decay, creating a quiet but unsettling tension throughout the book. The looming sense of scarcity, of health, of time, of water, adds weight to every page.

The dystopian themes are more atmospheric than plot-driven, and while that lends the book a poetic, meditative tone, it also makes it feel somewhat diffuse. There are moments of deep insight and beauty, but they’re interspersed with sections that feel repetitive or abstract, which can dull the emotional impact over time.

Still, Caffall offers a unique voice and perspective.. For readers drawn to quiet, reflective dystopias, this will be a compelling, if occasionally uneven, read.

All the Water in the World transports you to a near-future world reshaped by water, driven by climate change. It’s an epic and moving story that kept me both thinking and on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

Thank you Eiren Caffall, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

The plot of "All the Water in the World "by Eiren Caffall revolves around a group of people who are trying to survive the effects of climate change in NYC. After the ocean started to overtake the streets, they initially stayed in the city in the hopes the flood gates would hold. The gates eventually fell, and now they are fleeing for their lives after a hypercane destroys the museum that has been sheltering them for several years. Apocalyptic fiction is not my usual wheelhouse, but this is incredibly well written, descriptive, and ominously real. It has been a long time since I've stayed up late to finish a book but "All the Water in the World" kept me turning pages. I have already recommended this book to 3 people.

This book had an interesting premise and I love this genre of dystopian story but this was a really slow read for me, it didn’t captivate me like a Station Eleven (which this was compared to) did, and just felt a bit lacking in action.

An interesting take on a post-apocalyptic survival story. Nonie and her family are living at the top of the Natural History Museum after much of the world was destroyed. As researchers and scientists, they are concerned with preserving the history in the museum and also theirs. Nonie, a young girl with a gift for feeling when storms are coming and what kind, lets her family know that a hypercane is coming.
They head upstate to escape and find that people have learned to survive in a much different way.
This is a story about keeping records, preserving history, and survival even in the worst of times. A different read, but a good one.

This book really just took me for a ride. I loved the build up, the character development, and the writing. I would definitely read more from this author!

This was ok. Started off promising but then fell flat near the end.
I can see other people liking this though.

This was wonderful! I loved the writing style, the characters, the world-building…everything about it was top-notch. I will definitely be recommending this book!

Set in the not so distant future, All the Water in the World follows Nonie, a young girl raised in the abandoned American Museum of Natural History (Amen) in New York City along with her scientist parents, older sister Bix, and other fellow colleagues of her parents who strive to continue their preservation work amidst a global flood that has ravaged the city.

Told in alternating timelines, in the present, Nonie and her family must evacuate their home that they have known in search of higher ground and her mother's family's farm after they finally lose the museum to a new storm. In the past, Nonie remembers the early days at Amen after the initial flooding events force them from their family home.

In the vein of Station Eleven and The Road, All the Water in the World is a beautifully written and poetic look at climate change and the way different people cope and survive a natural disaster. Nonie's journey is heartachingly realistic and though she is young, she is very smart for her age and has a special relationship with water that helps her overcome her hardships.

Although there is action, this one is more of a slow meandering river of a novel that focuses more on character studies than plot. It is not a page turner in the typical dystopian thriller sense, but nonetheless keeps the reader on the edge of their seat, thirsting for more. 4.5 stars overall

Thank you to NetGalley, Eiren Caffall, and St. Martin's Press for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

This story was sensational, and thought provoking. The characters were so well thought out and well rounded. It was kind of a slow start for the first couple of chapters that were leading up to the conflict, and the beginning of the main journey. After the first couple of chapters, though, I was hooked and it was steady from then on with obstacles and hardships, with heartbreak and triumphs. If you've ever seen the movie Flow, it was very reminiscent. Since I've finished this book, it's lived rent free in my head and I just cannot stop thinking about it and how it has real world implications.

I love dystopian novels and this one set on the rooftops of New York city with a young protagonist and her friends and family was perfect. Will they make it to safety. Is there anywhere safe. that is the dilemma. Read it.