Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I was not able to get into the story so I did not finish.

I loved this! The twists didn't feel cheap. I loved the dynamics between the characters and the ways they tried to stay rooted. Creating an identity when you are lost is hard and the characters in this were really trying their best and I felt so sad when it ended and I didnt see how they landed.

Adopted twins Drita and Petrit (Pete) grew up knowing almost nothing about their Albanian heritage, as they grew up in Connecticut and had a typical childhood. Drita, however, followed the path of the good girl in her grades, and chose to attend college. Pete chose a different path which created a separation between them. Now in their twenties, Drita’s life hasn’t turned out as she’d hoped, having to drop out of graduate school to care for their mother. When Pete’s girlfriend shows up with his son and needs help, she does her best to take care of them and to find Pete. As she digs more into where he might be, and their shared path, a lot of hidden secrets are revealed.
This is a hard book to review. It’s a messy look at the lives of people, with some shocking twists, as themes of identity, family, addiction, and poverty are discussed. The characters are complicated and often not very likable. And yet, the story will stick with you.
If you’re looking for a feel good story to escape reality, this one is not for you. If you’re prepared to take a walk in the realities and messiness of real struggles, pick this one up and take a journey.
This has already been published, so pick it up at your favorite book buying location.
Thank you to @netgalley for the free advanced copy in exchange for my review.
#NetGalley #EverybodySaysItsEverything

Thank you Random House Publishing Group - Random House for allowing me to read and review Everybody Says It's Everything on NetGalley.

Published: 03/18/25

Stars: 2

Oh, not again. The synopsis drew me in. Unfortunately the book never actually created a story for me. I teetered between boredom, confusion, to what is the appeal.

Characters like Pete are frustratingly antiquated. There were paragraphs so descriptive I would tear up. However, the storyline itself was convoluted.

Obviously this didn't work for me. I hope if you pick this up the book works for you.

There is foul language.

Twins, Drita and Petrit have been told that they were both adopted as Albanian orphans. They are close but very different. Drita is the responsible one while Pete (Petrit) follows his passions. When he decides to join an Albanian militant group, he leaves his girlfriend and son and disappears. When Drita takes them in, she becomes determined to find her brother and makes her own connection with the leader of the militant group. Her mother also decides that this is the time to reveal the real story of Drita’s and Pete’s adoption.
I liked the creativity behind the plot of this book but found the delivery cumbersome. The book dragged in places and seemed somewhat disjointed. It was just OK for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review. Opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed this book and I think it was a good on-purpose tough read. To see the characters struggling so much, it wanted to make me shake them. I also find it fascinating to hear about children who were adopted into different countries and how they navigate culture.

2.5 rounded up.

This book made me feel things. Mostly bad and uncomfortable… I didn’t care about Pete’s storyline. He was a miserable character with no integrity, and I don’t think his narrative lent him any sympathy. I’d rather have had more Shanda chapters, or even flashbacks about Jackie.

The author also did that thing where the important reveal happens OFF stage. This is a book written in third person. There’s no reason to leave out critical elements of the story and emotions!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for lending to me. I ended up borrowing a copy from the library after pub date because I just couldn’t get invested in this one.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. I was sad this book just didn't happen to be for me, I had a really hard time getting into it

This book was surprisingly engaging, a hidden gem of the year so far. The characters, especially Drita and Dakota, really crept into my heart and made me root for them throughout the novel. Aliu did a great job showing the reader how every person in this book had difficult choices to make, difficult circumstances to overcome, and how those issues intersected among all the different relationships between them. I found the novel slow, but in a pleasant way - I wanted to stick with it and really savor the beautiful writing and these intensely flawed, interesting characters.

Everybody Says It's Everything is the story of Drita and Pete who are adopted Albanians. We travel their stories through multiple points of view and various time frames. I often prefer a more linear narrative so that may have impacted my enjoyment of this story. All in all it was a good read for me.
4 stars
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advacne copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion. Everybody Says It's Everything is available now.

Told through alternating timeframes and perspectives, Everybody Says It's Everything tells the story of Petrit and Drita, adopted Albanian twins, who are struggling in their adulthood. I enjoyed Drita's chapters, which were primarily set in the present day, and also enjoyed the flashbacks from their mother Jackie, telling the story of how she came to adopt them.

I will admit to knowing nothing about Albanian immigrants or the war in Kosovo, so that was quite interesting to me, but I feel that while Drita and Pete learned a lot about their own family, the backdrop of the immigration and the war were left too vague. I also just found Pete incredibly irritating, and I'm not sure that the explanation given for the twins' differences really bears out. Pete never really feels like a real character, and I don't really have any idea what he wants.

For me, a highlight for the book are the chapters shown from Pete's girlfriend, Shanda's perspective. She is humanized and you really understand why she makes the descent into addiction, and why she makes the choices she does. If anything, it served to further highlight how Pete really just floated around, impacting the lives of the women around him, but didn't really have a distinct voice despite half of the book being told from his point of view.

3.5 stars, but I rounded up because I don’t want to add any more negativity to the universe right now.

I love to read a story that shines a light on a part of the world I know nothing about, in this case, the war in Kosovo, albeit told through an Albanian-American perspective. This is a story that delves into some very heavy issues, so be warned. The novel is told from multiple points of view, which I find compelling, but can also obscure certain truths. I also love a story with long-kept family secrets, and this one has a doozy, with deep implications for all those affected. All in all, this is a challenging and compelling book.

Peter and Drita are twins who were adopted and grew up as a typical American kids near the end of the 20th century. Growing up with their disabled adoptive mother, the twins were inseparable with little connection to their Albanian heritage. They were total opposites: Pete the bad boy and Drita the good girl. As they neared adulthood, their paths diverged and Drita lost touch with her brother for 3 years… until his girlfriend comes to Drita seeking help caring for their young son.

Hoping this is the chance to reconnect with her brother, Drita agrees to help. As her search for Pete begins, she finds him mixed up in the war in Kosovo and learns the shocking truth about their adoption.

This novel had a great premise and I was really looking forward to it but it just kind of meandered and the characters were just not easy to connect with. I kept hoping it would get better with themes of family, love, belonging and heavier ones such as disability, infertility, addiction and hardship, but it never fully materialized.

Thank you to @netgalley @atrandombooks @randomhouse for a #gifted early digital copy of this novel

After having loved the author's debut novel, Brass, I was thrilled to pick up her latest release and it definitely did not disappoint! A truly beautifully-written story of complicated family and I felt like the story and characters were so relatable. I don't think it's getting nearly the attention it deserves! Highly recommend!

2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita
was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

This book . . . . while grateful for the ARC, I'm sorry to say it wasn't for me. I tried so many times to make it work for me, but it just didn't. I didn't feel the characters came to life for me and I could never maintain an interest in their lives. It's a shame, because the Balkan war and its aftermath is fascinating to me, and generally the fiction that comes from that era is dark, but holds my interest.

𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝑫𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒂 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝑷𝒆𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔.

The novel begins with a sweet memory Drita carries about her troubled twin brother Pete, a reminder of the love they once shared, before his life became a disaster. It was Christmas seventeen years ago when he gave her a gift she had been yearning for and never expected to receive, but the wildness within Pete, even then, was evident. She has always felt different from Pete, even in their close times, being far steadier, straightlaced. His cool attitude is something she couldn’t fake if she tried. Now, dreading answering the ringing telephone, sure it can only be news that Pete, her “junkie” brother has overdosed on drugs or been killed by his dealer, she braces herself to take charge. She knows her disabled, widowed, adoptive mother shouldn’t have to deal with this, not with her failing health. Instead, Jackie informs her that Nadia is dead. Nadia, Pete’s girlfriend Shanda’s mother, also his son Dakota’s grandmother. Drita is perplexed that Jackie thinks it should matter to them, that she claims Nadia as family is loose at best. As a VNA nurse, Drita volunteers to pick up the medical detritus that remain from Nadia’s apartment, but she is shocked when she comes face to face with her nephew, who doesn’t even know her, surrounded by trash and a weeping Shanda. Worse, she learns that Pete is nowhere to be found, in fact, he hasn’t been in contact with Shanda nor their little boy. Drita doubts her own place in life too, not quite getting as far as she had wanted to in her career. She isn’t exactly walking in the sunshine herself. Drita offers Shanda her help but ends up with far more questions than answers. How much is expected of you, in a fractured family?

Family is a complicated tree, Albanian born Drita feels grateful for everything Jackie has done for she and her brother. Their father Dom wasn’t exactly the greatest, but where would they be without Jackie’s love and care? She knows Pete cannot blame Jackie for his failure, and that the success Drita has had isn’t luck but hard work, staying on a straight path. So why is she being pulled into his mess? There are things that happened in Arizona with Dakota, Pete is ashamed, feels worthless as a father, unfit. Drita doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does about his choice to stay away or why he has become drawn to his only friend Valon and his organization to help fight for Kosovo. This was during violent conflicts between the Albanians and Serbs, and with Pete’s Albanian roots, he is encouraged to get involved. But Drita will do anything she can to get inside and find Pete, remind him of his responsibility to his child.

The mystery surrounding the twins’ ethnic identity and birth is astounding. Jackie has hidden parts of her own painful past that must come to light and could well change how Drita and Pete define themselves. It begs the question what makes us who we are? Are we the stories we are told, our own inventions, or something in the blood? The novel has a deeper story than estranged siblings, it’s an engaging read about one’s loyalty to their country too.

Yes, read it.

Published March 18, 2025

Random House

See full review on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website: Human need for connection fuels ‘Everybody Says It’s Everything’

"Xhenet Aliu won Georgia’s most prestigious literary award, the Townsend Prize for Fiction, for her 2018 debut novel, “Brass.” Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the multigenerational family drama took place among the abandoned brass factories of her native Waterbury, Connecticut.

For her second novel, “Everybody Says It’s Everything,” Aliu (whose first name is pronounced Jeanette) pulled inspiration from a different aspect of her hometown’s history: the influx of Albanians who relocated from Kosovo in the 1990s during the Balkan Wars..."

https://www.ajc.com/arts-entertainment/2025/04/human-need-for-connection-fuels-everybody-says-its-everything/

I just found this to be super confusing, not really meshed out, and confusing. The author left out so much - never fleshing out the twins' upbringings which would have added some much needed depth to their characters.

It would be an understatement to say that Pete and Drita have gone in different directions since they left the suffocating apartment they grew up in with their adoptive parents.
Drita is the good twin - college degree, close to home, respectable job, while it seems Pete has always been destined to be the one in trouble. When the story opens, he's got no job, no money, no housing, and has abandoned his girlfriend and small child. The one thing they have in common, though, is neither of them are happy with where they've ended up.
Moving back and forth between a few timelines, this is a story that shows how complicated family can be, and explores varying ideas of the ways it can look.
It was surprisingly nice that everything didn't wrap up as one might expect, but rather kind of messy and incomplete, the way things do.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for this #arc of #everybodysaysitseverything by #xhenetaliu in exchange for an honest review.