"Literary Thriller" might be one of my new favorite genres! If you loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, the pictures from that movie will be set in your mind while reading this book. I can definitely see this one becoming a movie one day. So good!

review submitted in error, will update when i have read this book, instead of pasting a review for the wrong book

If you want to know what it might be like to live in a future flooded world with almost constant rainstorms of different types, trying to survive with many threats and dangers along the way, this might be a good book for you to read. It is very well done, and it's easy to imagine oneself there.

To me, it was a nightmare. It was too realistic and didn't give me enough of a break from my current reality.

"All the Water in the World" by Eiren Caffall is about 13 year old, Noni, and her older sister, Bix, and their father, and a family friend named Keller. The story starts with them living on top of the American Museum of Natural History (nicknamed AMEN). Soon, a hypercane, a monster storm, comes and causes a lot of destruction, forcing them to head out in a boat to try to get from NYC to upstate Massachusetts, where there is family farm.

The audiobook is a bit over 8 hours long and well narrated by Eunice Wong in a serious and scared kind of voice.

I enjoyed this quote, "...for some people, things are harder, and they don't know it, but then also things are more beautiful because they're harder and they don't know that either."

Characters - 5/5
Writing - 4/5
Plot - 3/5
Pacing - 4/5
Unputdownability - 4/5
Enjoyment - 1/5
Narration - 4/5
Cover - 4/5
Overall - 29/8 = 3 5/8 rounded up to 4 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley, MacMillan Audio, and Eiren Caffall for providing this audiobook in exchange for my honest review.

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall was both riveting and thought provoking. It was well written and well plotted. The characters balanced each other and yet maintained their own identities. All the Water in the World began in New York City’s Museum of Natural History on its roof. Before that, for a short period of time, it revolved around a family who had lived on Tenth Street, a family that consisted of a mother, father and two little girls. The first born daughter was named Beatrice but everyone called her Bix and the younger daughter was named Norah but everyone called her Nonie. That family had made their home on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History when storm after storm, some far worse than one before it, struck and made their home on Tenth Street unsafe, dangerous and uninhabitable. Nonie had been told that before she was even born, storms had already begun to affect “coastlines, glaciers, reefs, whole islands and cities”. It was a slow process but it had begun. The night the storm tide flooded the city was the night this family managed to get to the AMNH, the safest place that would become their home. Their plan to meet Aunt Clare and get to her farm was abandoned for then.

Nonie loved the water, much like her mother, but Bix was terrified of it ever since they escaped from Tenth Street. Bix and Nonie’s mother was dying. She had an inherited kidney disease with no cure. Things at AMNH had gone as well as they could have hoped for a number of years. Of course there was the Mosquito Borne that took many lives, hurricanes, tornadoes and N’oreasters. Sadly, their mother died. Then there was the hypercane, “the biggest kind of hurricane there could be.” This occurred when Bix was sixteen and Nonie was thirteen. With a canoe taken from AMNH, Bix, Nonie, their father and Keller, another researcher that had lived at AMNH with them, made their way to their Mother’s and Aunt Clare’s farm, Tyringham, their safe place if AMNH was ever compromised, north along the uncharted waters of the Hudson River. The only thing that they saved from AMNH was a logbook that documented their “records of lost collections”. What would they encounter as they maneuvered north along the Hudson River? Would they be able to reach the farm where their mother lived as a young girl? Could it become their new “safe place”?

All the Water in the World was an eye opening look at what the remnants of climate change, like melted glaciers, extensive flooding, more and more strong hurricanes and wildfires, could do to life as we knew it if left untouched. We are all guilty of feeling bad when natural disasters occur, but things are cleaned up, mended and replaced and life goes on without any real change. Not that the things that happened in All the Water in the World were an exact match to what we could expect someday but what if they were? More serious attention and action must be allocated to climate change and now!

All the Water in the World was told from Nonie’s POV. The chapters were short and therefore encouraged me to read more than I might have. It was hard to put this book down. I really enjoyed the characters in this book especially Nonie. How sad that this was the only world that she could remember. She had no recollection of how the world was before. I listened to the audiobook that was narrated by Eunice Wong and also read along in the book that I won in a goodreads giveaway.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for allowing me to listen to the audiobook of All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall through Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press through Goodreads in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I was really excited for this one, but in the end it just didn't vibe well with me I think.

The book follows Nonie, a young girl (I can't remember the exact age, but prepubescent) who is connected to water differently than others. The world has flooded, and Nonie, her family, and other survivors must navigate living in this new, lawless world.

The story itself has an interesting premise, but it was hard to stay connected with it. Nonie isn't an emotional main character. Every other chapter is a flashback chapter, which derails the pacing of the story a bit. I'm sure many people can enjoy this if these things won't bother them, but it just definitely wasn't one for me. I appreciate receiving an arc, and having a chance to review this.

Audiobook lovers know that Eunice Wong is a TOP TIER narrator. So imagine my excitement when I saw she was narrating this book being billed as The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler meets Station Eleven. I was jumping at the chance to read it. And it totally lived up to all of my self-built hype.

Stranded in New York amidst a climate catastrophe landscape, Nonie and her family live in New York, seeking safe haven in the Museum of Natural History and exploring Central Park to hunt for food. They want desperately to save the history and culture being swept away with each flood and storm. When disaster strikes, they are forced to flee their refuge, cataloging the collections and histories they left behind as they go.

This isn't a pulse-pounding thriller of a dystopian novel. It's quiet and contemplative about history and how it is made and of course about climate change. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Children of Men. It's tone was somewhat distant and disconnected emotionally but it painted a powerful consideration of the future looming before us and how it might be experienced by the communities who only know that world.

Wong's narration of this story was absolutely perfect and I would highly recommend the audio version to prospective readers.

I’m sorry i had to dnf at like 35%. I did not like the choppy writing style, didn’t like any of the characters, and didn’t care about the plot so it didn’t work for me at all. I may have done this to myself bc it really isn’t the kind of book I’d normally like, but I thought it would be something powerful and different. Instead it fell flat.

I also was not a fan of the audiobook narrator which may have impacted me as well. The way they were calling the museum amen made me mad for literally no reason at all.

This was so wonderful. I really enjoyed this story--and think the comparisons to STATION ELEVEN are apt. It was atmospheric, evocative, and moving. I saw one review that said it started slow--but I was captivated from the beginning. I think it's character-driven and the world-building is lovely . 5 stars. One of my favorite reads of 2024.

Loved the concept of the book, a post-apocalyptic novel where the researchers are the leads and not put in a corner to ignore , but the slow character development and lack of initial world building made this a slog to get through. This is generally a genre I favor but this book is a miss for me. Stars rounded up for the premise.

Nonie lives in the American Museum of Natural History in New York because of the immense hurricane and other intense storms that have swept over the world. When a huge flood hits the museum, Nonie leaves with her sister Bix, their father and their family friend Keller. They are heading to their Aunt Clare’s house. On the way, they fight nature as the storms increase in strength and the wild and unknown. They try to stop for rest from the river and shelter from the rain but meet Lost, two men that only seem to want to harm. Father gets shot, Bix also gets shot and Keller gets pneumonia from jumping into the dirty river to rescue their boat from the strong currents. Will any of them survive?

“All the Water in the World” by Eiren Caffall is a reflective commentary on loss and the connection we have with the world. Through lyrical writing and vivid imagery, this story weaves together personal grief with the larger issue of how fragile our planet is.

What I liked about this listen was the poetic language and depth of emotion. It’s clear that the author poured a lot into this story and her reflections on water as both a life-giving source and life-taking force is beautiful.

I think if I had read this book instead of listened to it I would have rated it higher. I found the audiobook hard to follow along with, especially as we were jumping between what’s happened in the past and the present. I also found that the narrator could have been more engaging. It’s hard to rate the narrative from an audiobook perspective because while I didn’t think the listening experience was great I could see how the narrative on page could have worked.

I would definitely be interested in re-reading the physical copy at some point and seeing if it changed my opinions on the narrative.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this free review copy of the audiobook, read by Eunice Wong.

Continuing my "drowned cities after climate change" series, this one is set in and around NYC. Unlike the other books I've read recently in this theme, society is NOT carrying on as usual and making small changes due to the water. In this book, the world we know today has been erased and replaced by water and disease and death. Do not get attached to any of the characters, because so many of them will die.

The writing is often lyrical. The POV is from a child who has been raised with a small community sheltering within the American Museum of Natural History, aka "amen." Yes, I got sick of hearing "amen," it was an annoying affectation. (Since I listened to the audiobook, I don't know how this is spelled in the book - perhaps it's just "AMNH" and Wong chose to pronounce it "amen.") Caffall often takes her time with tangents to describe quiet, simple moments: picking blackberries, drinking fresh well water, a child lying on the floor pretending to swim with trilobites. I <i>almost</i> loved that, but it never quite worked for me, they always felt artificially injected into the story. The rest of the writing is straightforward, workmanlike, this happened and this happened and this is what it looked like and this is the straightforward dialogue and this is what they did next, etc. The blunt writing and the lyrical writing bump up against each other uncomfortably, like boats tethered in a harbor during a storm.

There is the faintest whiff of a suggestion of magical realism, with Nonie's implied ability to sense water. The book opens with this ability of hers, and a few times she senses a bad storm coming and is able to warn others, but other than that, it doesn't really play into plot.

Aside from the occasional lyricism and the implied magical realism that does not really happen, this is mostly just a survival story. Nonie and her sister, Bix, battle to survive the diseased flood waters of a post-apocalyptic society. At times, other humans are the antagonists, but most people they meet are helpful, and the most deadly antagonist is nature itself, both in the form of flood waters and waves as well as bacterial and viral infections. I expected this to try to say something bigger about society, but I never felt it.

For an adventure story, this is hella slow. I did become highly motivated to keep reading to find out where this story is headed, so although it was mostly meh, it was slightly riveting towards the end.

The very last chapter serves as an epilogue and it gets a little preachy. I thought the book would have been stronger without it, if the last line of the book had been the last line of chapter 79: "let's get inside ... it's going to rain."

I did not care for Wong's reading style at all. I've never listened to an audiobook read by her before, and this will likely be the last book I ever listen to read by her.

Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for sending me a copy of this audiobook! All opinions are my own!

I don't even know where to start with this book. The writing style itself is so unique but yet perfectly curated to the story itself and the way that the world is ending. The flashes back into simpler times before the bigger storm hits. It beautifully paints the picture of the humanity that was trying to save itself, sometimes in vain.

I loved the way that Nonie developed in this book, from someone who was letting the tide take her wherever, sometimes literally. To a young woman fighting for her world, also sometimes literally. She has so much passion in her in so many ways, and watching her navigate this world was beautiful.

This is a story that truly captures humanity and both our worst and best qualities. It will leave you thinking far beyond its pages and the tide you ride on through them.

This was a beautifully written dystopian/post-apocalyptic novel. I was left with a lot of questions and there were times it was tough to understand what was happening. But I appreciate that more and more dystopian novels are being written that focus on climate change.

This was a harrowing book. It reminded me in ways of Station 11, but also the tv show Revolution. Definitely a warning about the effects of climate change and how important community is. A timely read for sure.

After the glaciers melt, people are forced to take refuge in shelters that are not underwater, leading Noni and her family to settle at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. Because her parents worked there, the family has access to the space and sets up a refuge on the roof for themselves and other workers. They work to catalog safeguard the exhibits, protecting them from looters and preserving them for future generations. When a hypercane hits, the remaining family and their friend Keller are forced to make their way to safe ground. They are faced with innumerable hardships and scary circumstances on their journey on the water but are determined to find safety in this new, water filled reality.

While I mostly enjoyed the story, I must admit it was hampered by the incredibly slow narration of Eunice Wong. The story was interesting but seemed plodding and unnecessary in points. For a dystopian fantasy it was a little too boring for me. Three stars.

I received this advance audio copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and feedback.

I enjoyed this audio. This was an interesting listen and story. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the gifted arc.

Thank you to Macmillain Audio for my review copy. My opinions are my own.

I knew very little going into this book and was immediately hooked into the story and the characters. I loved the fact that the chapters were titled and helped me keep track if it was a present day chapter or a flashback chapter.

Eunice's narration was amazing, I felt like I was right there with Nonie as she navigates from the roof of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to a farm up north out of the flooded city. I was so caught up into the story, I may have completely ignored my family while occasionally arguing with the characters as I listened.

Highly recommend listening to the story.

I was really excited for this book. I love apocalyptic fiction, and the premise of this one is different from most in the genre. I have only read one other like this (with a world consumed by water), and I loved that one, so I thought I would give this a try. The storytelling is definitely in the same vein as Station Eleven and After the Flood. The descriptions definitely made me feel like I was there, which is important in this kind of story. However, there was a lack of character development and none of them stood out to me as strikingly different from the others. Because of that, I had a hard time connecting and therefore caring about what happened to them. This story is also a slow burn, which isn't in itself a bad thing, but combined with the lackluster characters, I almost didn't finish. Because I love the genre and I enjoyed the premise, I gave it the benefit of the doubt and continued. I did like the ending and found that interesting.

Just when I thought I was done with post-apocalyptic fiction...

Eiren Caffall beautifully intertwines climate fiction with a compelling coming-of-age narrative. The story's deliberately measured pace serves a crucial purpose, allowing readers to fully absorb and contemplate the horrifying reality of the world Caffall has created.

While the book doesn't shy away from bleakness, the main characters provide a (much-needed) source of hope - survivors making their home on the roof of New York's Natural History Museum, becoming guardians of humanity's collected knowledge.