Member Reviews

this was okay - a decent story of grief, although nothing new and certainly didn't feel like something I will continue to think about or remember.

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Whilst I enjoyed the dynamic and parallel between the grieving characters, I really struggled to follow the plot. It seemed to jump between points and was so heavily Interwoven at some points and then at others I simply had no idea what was going on.

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This...well, this was a book. The grief that was portrayed was real and haunting - the type of grief that pulls you under & keeps you down. It was heavy, it was intense. The major loss truly just disrupted the main couple's life in such a way that was profound and relentless.

I understood the loss, but I just felt no....connection. Like, I just finished this book and I can honestly say I have no idea who the characters were? I saw no hope, no anything - just the neverending fog of grief. This book is a really easy read in the sense that it's under 200 pages, but there was no clear ending, no clear anything which was a bit odd. I feel like I am left with so many questions now, did they ever see hope again?

Thank you to NetGalley and Mindbuck Media for this e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion.

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Unfortunately despite enjoying the premise of the book I continuously ran into the issue of finding myself confused or lost on the direction the book intended to take. While good language was present it almost feels half finished.

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In All That Remains, author Jane Darby is going for a different type of story. Her characters are all incomplete and struggling. It is depressing to read their tales. Although the novel is somewhat short, I felt drained when I finished it. The adults, Anna and Richard, are on the ground as Richard has fallen. Will he get up? Will they then rest before the fireplace with coffee in their hands? That we don't know. The two youth seem to have it better, but again there is little clue as to their future. So the reader is left with questions, a fact that I found unsatisfying.
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

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This was a wonderful book. Thought provoking with characters you relate to in some level or that had a life foreign to you to give you insight. The stories of the characters were interwoven with skill.

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This was a beautifully done story about grief and loss, it had that element that I was looking for and thought it worked with the description. I was invested in what was happening with the characters and thought it was a realistic portrayal. Jane Darby wrote this perfectly and am excited for more from the author.

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All That Remains by Jane Darby was an interesting story about grief. I appreciated how Anna turned in on herself with grieving and Richard did the opposite. I wanted to love the characters but some of the decisions they made didn't make sense to me, which made it hard to connect. Some plot points seemed to coincidental. Lots to like here, though. Overall, it was a thoughful and moving story. Very relatable.

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This novel was somehow depressing. Grief always is. But the events taking place are too farfetched to be believable. And the ending just leaves with more questions than answers.

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I may have had higher hopes after reading the description, but I felt nothing toward the characters. I couldn't make enough of a connection to actually care what was happening.
Overall just kinda meh.

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Thank you to NetGalley for my advanced free copy in exchange for my honest review! As someone who loves books about grief, I was disappointed in this book. I didn't connect with this book as much as I wanted/needed to. I appreciated the author's writing but I did not enjoy/couldn't connect to the two main characters.

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[..]she listened to the sounds of Richard getting ready for bed: click of a light switch, rush of water in the sink, sounds of an intimate, shared life, so maddeningly calm and deliberate that each was another stone in the wall rising between them."

I have always really enjoyed books that tackle grief, and all of the ways human beings process the unavoidable experience of major loss. This book was no exception. This was full of twists and turns of darkness, as well as that overwhelming feeling of "how dare the world keep turning when my loved one is no longer here?" I was really impressed with the writing, and ended up with a good handful of annotations even with something so short.

I don't want to say much more to spoil anything. Absolutely worth the hour or two of your time to read.

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I actually DNF’d this books at about 70% and did not provide a rating. I realized I had no connection to the characters, nor to the author’s writing style. There were some beautifully written sentences sprinkled in, but I found it, for the most part, kind of boring and too formulaic.

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