I really liked this book. I appreciated that it was told through the eyes of a young girl. The fear of a child is so much more intense than an adult. I felt so tense when reading through the storms.
I've read in other articles and books that one day, New York will be engulfed by the ocean. This book gave a birds-eye view to what that could potentially look like.
I was invested in these characters.

There were so many lovely turns of phrase in this book. Despite being set in a dystopian world, there was little violence. Rather, it was the understandably confused, sometimes disjointed, musings of a young teenage girl. Born after the world has been covered by the water of melting ice caps, she struggles to make sense of the world.
Because she, Nonie, is only thirteen, there is something of a young adult novel about this book. It kept it from being too violent, yes, but also from being more nuanced or complex. There were no other viewpoints. So many questions weren't answered.
I think Caffall painted a thoughtful portrait of a world that has all but dissolved in the rising sea waters. I would recommend it.

My thanks for the ARC goes to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press. I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Genre: Climate Change Fiction, Natural Disaster Book, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Post-Apocalyptic, Survival , Dystopian
Representation: Multiple races

ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD reminds me of an old post-apocalyptic novel, Lucifer's Hammer from the 70s, because this book shows us immediate and more long-term effects from natural disaster and human nature to divide and "other" people. This novel ends on a more hopeful note.

Themes:
What it means to be human
Coming-of-age
Survival
Family
Love

If you enjoy these big "what if" questions in books, this is the one for you.

Happy reading!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for gifting me an advance reader's copy in exchange for an honest review!

This book takes place after climate change has and is ravaging the world. Our protagonist, Nonie, lives with her father and sister on the roof and in the top levels of the American Museum of Natural History, along with different scientists and people who have made their way to the shelter. Storms have decimated much of New York City, but floodgates do their best to keep the world at bay - until the big storm comes and Nonie and her family are forced to leave. We follow them as they try to find somewhere else to go, and it's action-packed, switching back and forth between their life at the museum and their journey to a new home. The narrative moves quickly, but Caffall manages to anchor us in quiet, contemplative moments and interactions that hit with a gut punch.

I was initially apprehensive about reading this book because I'm not really in the mood for doom-and-gloom right now when the whole world feels doom and gloom, but this book was incredibly, incredibly hopeful. Hopeful that no matter how bad things get, there will always be people willing to help and be in community. Hopeful that we can save our history and art and create a new home even after all has been destroyed. Hopeful about our capacity to see past our differences. This book does not by any means have any rose-colored glasses - it's not remotely Pollyanna-ish about how climate change will inevitably bring out the worst of people's racism, nativism, insularity, fear, and violence. And it didn't feel overbearing or overwrought - it didn't hit you in the head with it. I felt so attached to Nonie and Bix and Keller and the whole cast of characters we got to know, and this story will stay with me for a while.

At any given time, museum workers take on the tasks of identifying, cataloguing, and protecting exhibits, cultural records, and artifacts. This book is an apocalyptic account of the aftermath of climate change in the Northeast and the efforts to save those artifacts. The entire Hudson River Valley, including New York City, has been inundated with as much as 90 feet of toxic floodwaters. After their apartment has been washed out, curator Allen and his 8 and 11 year old daughters, Nonie and Bix, take refuge on the upper floors of The Museum of Natural History.

They, along with a handful of similarly dedicated academics and co-workers, move exhibits higher, out of harm’s way. They write in logbooks, recording all they can for future peoples. But when the “hypercane” hits, water breeches the windows of the museum’s top floor. They are forced to flee quickly. They appropriate a Native American canoe from an exhibit, fill it with as much food and medicine as they could gather, and pilot it north up the flooded Hudson River, attempting to reach the family farm Upstate.

Much of the population had already been taken out by a highly contagious, usually fatal disease. Scores of others drowned or escaped to higher ground as storms grew in intensity. Life was divided into two time frames, the “World as it Was“ and now, the vastly different “World as it Is.” The survivors bonded together through numerous life-threatening ordeals. They were resourceful, on alert, and almost always on the move. Author Caffall writes with a masterful, poetic hand, read-out-loud beautifully. The short chapters made for a quick and easy read. A fascinating, gripping, and thought-provoking tale. I could not put it down!

With thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a free advance reader’s e-copy, I have written this review voluntarily. (Publication date: January 7, 2025)

All The Water In The World describes a time when climate change has produced such massive weather that ‘normal’ life is not possible. Families live in warrens in high rise buildings and try to keep life and knowledge going by memorizing information from books in libraries. It’s a depressing book to read and think we may have something like that to look forward to.

I’ve been gravitating towards post-apocalyptic novels and this one fit the bill. Reminiscent of Station Eleven and navigating a new society. Excited to see the hype this gets!

Wow. I haven’t read anything this thought provoking in a while. This one will stick with me. It’s a climate-focused apocalyptic story, told from the perspective of a child. It was tense at times and very moving, with hope sprinkled in.
Loved the idea of them starting in a museum, and the well-characterized moments in different rooms of the museum. It was so well written and brought some whimsy to a depressing experience.
The different people they encountered on their journey felt so true to life. The writing was compelling and each character felt full and dynamic.

All The Water In The World is a literary post apocalyptic gem of a novel about a world with too much water. In an undisclosed future NYC, a group escape their home during a massive storm and try to find family further inland. Told from the first person POV of young teen Nonie, who along with her sister, Bix, their father, and other survivors lives on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, trying to preserve the museum’s collections and survive the storms and floods caused by climate change. The book opens during a hypercane, with the group having to escape into the storm as it tears the museum open.
This was a beautifully written dystopian novel, told in the present day with flashbacks to the family’s past & how they and the other survivors ended up at AMNH. There was incredible character development in both sisters, and the story was both heartbreaking and beautiful.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of All The Water In The World in exchange for my honest review, I can’t wait to read more by this author in the future!

Read this book. New York City after all the glaciers melt, some people have survived by retreating to the rooftop of their workplace, and guarding exhibits there at The New York Museum of Natural History, while learning and attempting to preserve the past with respect.

However, the water, weather, and world are not at all finished.

Anticipated release January 2025. Look for it.

I enjoyed this apocalyptic story. It was very atmospheric. It reminded me of a cross between Station Eleven and The Walking Dead without the zombies. Recommended.

I received a free e-arc of this book through Netgalley. It's set in a world where we've lost most modern amenities as the glaciers have melted and the storm surges have wiped out most of our defenses. We get to know Nonie, Bix and their parents Fuller and Deidre through present time and through flashbacks. Norah seems to be on the Autism Spectrum and sees the world in a different way. She can sense what type of storms are coming. They live on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, but eventually have to leave as a storm takes what external resources they have left. Thankfully they have a lot of internal resources. The writing was very compelling and hard to put down.

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
Received as an ARC. Nonie and Bix grew up in New York in the near future where extreme storms caused flooding to where they had to make a new home on top of the American Museum of Natural History where there parents worked. Miami and New Orleans are decimated. Their family and friends survive there until a hypercane forces them to navigate north up the overflowing Hudson River to try to find dry land and start over.
As they head north their struggles continue and have to trust others along the way.

Note: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you, NetGalley and publishers.

All the Water in the World is a work of speculative literary fiction, recommended for readers who enjoyed Station Eleven, Our Missing Hearts, the Road and After the Flood. Nonie has grown up mostly in the World as It Is, with only vague memories of the way the world was before the glaciers melted. She and her family took shelter in the remnants of the American Museum of Natural History, until it is destroyed in a massive storm and they must strike out on a perilous journey into what was New York State. Note: As a dog lover, I’m confused by the choice the author made to constantly state that packs of abandoned stray dogs were the biggest predators to be concerned about, not the wolves “who only wanted deer, not humans.”

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

This is a beautifully written, moving novel set in a future created by unchecked global warming. Nonie is a young girl who lives on the roof of the Museum of Natural History in what was once New York City, along with her older sister, Bix, her father, and a small group of fellow survivors. They work to salvage the history held within the museum's walls while coping with great personal loss and an uncertain future, until one day a massive storm uproots them and forces them to leave what they know and hopefully find safety far from the city.

Their journey takes them across a landscape ravished by severe weather and dotted with communities of survivors, headed towards a place they aren't sure even exists anymore. They face peril at every turn but they also find comfort in each other and in the people they meet along the way.

This is a story about the things we carry, the stories that fuel us, the people who save us, and the community we create for ourselves. Eiren Caffall is a talented voice who I will definitely keep on my list of authors to follow. This novel will stay with me and I am grateful for the opportunity to have read it early.

The quick summary: A dystopian journey narrative in which the rising of the seas is made even more dangerous as terrible storms lash the earth and drown civilization. The story is told by a young girl drawn from logbooks she has kept recounting her early years living on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She has been there to see the changes from The World That Was, surviving with a small group, including her parents, intent on preserving the museum’s archives.
Beautiful writing and fascinating science are major points in the book’s favor, but the poor pacing prevents this from capturing my interest completely. The first half of the book is totally storm-tossed. By the time the remnants of this band make their way by river to another group of survivors north of the city, I was so waterlogged I was sure I had mold growing between my fingers.
The second half of the story is somewhat better as new characters are introduced, and with them, new conflicts. Frankly the horror of a world so fraught with natural disaster doesn’t make for great entertainment unless an element of hope is part of the story. Otherwise all we have to look forward to are more drowned bodies floating in the encroaching sea. The author does seem to realize that eventually but it was too little too late for this reader.

As someone who loves a dystopian story, I was very excited to get the arc of this one!

I absolutely loved this book. The writing was excellent and felt totally immersed and invested in the story. Once I got about 50% in, I couldn’t put it down and would be thinking of it when I wasn’t reading it. The chapters were short which kept me reading as well. I really enjoyed the end- it was very fitting and felt perfect.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.

Once again, I’ve taken the opportunity to pick up a book where things are much worse than the reality I’m currently living in to remind myself that things aren’t so bad for me after all. This time, we’re following a world in which climate change has ravaged The World as It Was and forced Nonie and her family to escape their home in the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in hopes of survival.

I liked this novel but didn’t quite love it like I thought I might. The writing was quite plain up until the last few chapters, and I saw this more as a YA read because of that (although the narrator is a 13 year old girl which may have also skewed my perspective). I enjoyed all of the plot-furthering chapters where the group travels north to safety, but this was constantly broken up by chapters from the past that slowed the pace of the story.

However, I relished the found family aspect of the novel, and the main characters felt very well formed in my mind. They also end up at Bannerman Island at some point which was cool for me to read since I had fairly recently visited! There are better climate disaster books out there, but I would stick recommend this if you’re looking to pick up something new.

*Thank you to NetGalley for exchanging an e-ARC of this book for an unbiased review!

Powerful and Prescient
Much of New York has been cut off from the rest of the world by flooding. No utilities, no medical care, desperate humans, wild animals in the parks. We follow Nony who feels the power of water and its movements. Her family and others survive under desperate circumstances. If you have watched a river rising, a wash running in the desert, or flooding from a hurricane this novel puts that into words.

I would like to thank St. Martin's Press, Eiren Caffall, and NetGalley for a chance to preview this title before it's publication date of January 7, 2025.

I very much wanted to DNF (did not finish) this book about 25% of the way. But I don't like to DNF advanced reader copies so I kept going. I am glad that I did too bc this book really got interesting and engaging by halfway in. That being said, the first half (especially the first quarter) was slow. Very slow.

This book is told through the POV of a 12 year old girl. She, her father, her sister, and a family friend are living in a museum in NYC when the floodgates, in an already flooded city, break and the whole city is washed away. This is after a time where, through climate change, the whole world is flooded and there has been disease brought on by the floodwaters and increased global temperatures. Once the museum is underwater, the group is forced to head north to find a farm where her mother grew up, in hopes that it is inhabitable. Of course, the journey is not smooth sailing and chaos ensues.

The first half of the book isn't just slow in terms of plot line, it is slow by every means possible. Yes, the plot is slow, but every other chapter explains something about The Time As It Was. However, that is often explaining different parts of the museum, so it reads like a history lesson. There is actually very little character development except to say that the main character has an supernatural-esque bond with water (ie she can sense storms and their intensity). We are told very little about how the world came to be, yet we are told great details about the genus and species of different insects and animals. Again, that tends to fade and action starts about halfway when the group is finally in the throes of their journey.

Overall, this book is perfectly okay. If you are looking for an apocalyptic story, you can take your chances bc it's more of a disaster narrative which happens to be set in an apocalyptic world.