⭐⭐⭐✨ 3.5/5

An engaging read with a lot of heart, but it’s one that asks for the right mindset to truly appreciate.

This book needs to be read with compassion—its portrayal of Rose’s journey through memory loss and her resilience is both touching and thought-provoking. It’s not a fast-paced thriller, but rather a quiet exploration of life’s complexities, and I think it’s one that I wouldn’t mind re-reading :)

Thank you Atria Books 🫶🏻

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

Although I had high hopes for this novel, but for me it became a frustrating DNF (did not finish) book.

Perhaps it is that I have too many elderly relatives in nursing homes, but I found the protagonist's extreme (and CONSTANT) confusion about her every thought or interaction with others too distracting and depressing.

Trigger warning: If you are empathetic to mental confusion or if you have dear family members experiencing memory and/or comprehension issues, you too might find yourself a bit unable to find delight and humor in this story.

Additionally, attempting to determine what is going on it this book (or even what is actually being said in even ONE conversation in this story) is nearly impossible.

The story is about 80-year old Rose who has dementia and a resident of a nursing home. She loses her friend to a freak accident, causing Rose to be aware of a cunning plot- or does she?

This book has a clever whodunit plot. Rose flips through words before landing on the correct one. Her children are involved in her life.

I will say the novel is a bit repetitive, and confusing at times. With that being said, I did enjoy it.

Overall a good book touching on a hard subject . Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher fir letting for letting me review book

I enjoyed the word play by 80-year-old Rose, a nursing home resident with dementia, whose love of nature, plants, and trees comes through when she remembers the botanical names of each flower and plant she cherishes in her memory. Though in her 80s and a widow, she still has enough determination to ferret out the center's secrets and the crimes she thinks she sees being done to employees, her friends in the home, and other residents.

Rose lives half of her time in a remembered garden with her second husband, now deceased. It spurs her on to also take note of the present and her circumstances. And in a very roundabout way, she achieves her goals.

The story was clever, cute, and even suspenseful, with an ending that brings relief and a sense of completion. Her use of malapropisms, misuse of words that sound alike, was also entertaining.

Rose is a feisty octogenarian who has lost her ability to remember consistently. Her memory comes in and out of focus—but mostly out. She searches for the right words in circuitous flip-throughs of malapropisms and puns before landing on the correct word. Her adult children have put her in a memory care facility and visit her every day, giving her a journal to record events. On her dresser are photos from her and her children’s lives. If only she knew who the strange man in the front photo was.

When she loses her friend in a freak accident, Rose becomes aware of an insidious plot—or is it just her imagination? Through disjointed details, snippets of clarity and hallucinations, she learns that those who are supposed to have her best interest at heart may in fact be putting her in danger.

Told through Rose’s memory limitations and perceptions, the storyline can be challenging to follow at times. But if we stay with her, Rose eventually makes sense of the kaleidoscope of clues.

I liked the creativity and wry humor in this story. While sometimes maddening, Rose’s failing memory also allows us to see her world and her heartbreaks with empathetic eyes. And while I found the ending chapters a little overwritten and drawn out, I appreciated the clarity of the resolution

The story was okay. I was drawn to the story when it mentioned the main character had dementia, but reading the story, I felt the wording was a bit repetitive and annoying to follow along. I liked that her children were an active role in her life , but the story seemed a bit bland to me

This book is a great concept, however, just as in life being around a person suffering from dementia can be draining. Since our narrator is the patient this ends up feeling monotonous. If you have had a loved one with dementia you well know it is very difficult to be around for long stretches. This type of unreliable narrator that ends up solving a crime, just feels unrealistic. A little less of the self correction when she is thinking would have been helpful. With all that said I did like the cozy murder mystery vibe of the book.

As the reader, you are privy to the jumbled thoughts and life of a woman with dementia living in an Australian care facility. Despite her cognitive challenges, and with the love and concern of her attentive children, she manages to reveal the dark truth about the financial dealings going on around her. A unique voice and a fascinating, though very sad, short novel.

This story revolves around a care facility for elderly patients, a woman who is a patient with dementia, and how her adult children and grandchildren interact with her. In part, it is also a love story, as well as a glimpse into how dementia changes how these patients view their new world, and how it affects the other members of the family.

Many thanks for the opportunity to read this story of family, aging, and love.


Pub Date: July 1 2025

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Atria Books

thank you so much to the publishers and authors for the arc. I absolutely loved this book and enjoyed the word play a lot. As a psychology student who has always loved to attend seminars about dementia and Alzheimer's, this book was the perfect book for me!!

An excellent read for any and all readers! Author comes at you with both barrels and knocks you out of your shoes! Great job fleshing out all the characters. I give this book FIVE stars! Definitely recommend!

This book was a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed the humor and wordplay, but it became a little repetitious for me. I also found the revelation of the crime at the end confusing. I thought the author did a great job showing the interplay between the mother with dementia in a nursing home and her adult children. How her children and grandchildren chose to spend their time visiting with their mother was fascinating. I also enjoyed the mother's surprising understanding of her children and their behaviors and her insights and observations of other residents and the staff. In many ways, this book demonstrated love and acceptance in challenging circumstances. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me read an advance copy of this book.

I didn’t finish the book, it’s just too raw for me as someone who lost their grandmother recently. However from what I read and the inner dialogue, I know this book would absolutely wreck me. It’s just too tender of a spot right now. But I absolutely will be back to read it in the future.

I loved this book so much because I used to work in nursing homes and I could relate to this book on another level. I didn’t want this book to end.


I received a copy of this book for my honest opinion from Netgalley

☆ .7
This was definitely a novel. Was it good ? Maybe I just didn’t get it but for me it wasn’t, it did have its moment where I felt slightly less bored but overall I don’t think it was for me.

I absolutely get that the author wanted us to feel and see what was going on through Rose’s head with her alzheimer’s but one can only read so much repetition of the same subjects and same sentences before one get’s bored. Rose’s itself has a character is good, she has a unique personality and is actually funny by moment if we forget the repetitiveness of everything.

The plot of the novel felt incredibly small, I felt like I read a whole bunch of nothing and I was actually relieved when it was over. There’s absolutely nothing going on whatsoever and every character except for our main one feels like the same one repeating because they all feel flat and one dimensional, which for a book this short makes reading it incredibly painful.

I wish I liked this. Thank you Netgalley, Atria Books and Simon&Schuster for the arc, I’m, as always, very greatful. Review will be posted closer to publication day.

All The Words We Know, by Bruce Nash, is a cute story of an elderly patient's life and her view of life in a nursing home. Her dementia is evident in her thought process and it is fun to see words that she misuses and the choices she goes through to get to the right word. It is a slow-paced novel, as I guess life is in these homes.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC ebook I read and reviewed. All opinions are my own.

The publishing industry abhors originality these days, sticking instead to the safe and familiar tropes. One of those is quaint books about old people. Another one are amateur sleuths with some sort of cognitive impediment.
Accordingly, the protagonist of this novel is an old woman who begins to suspect that something might be going wrong in the care facility. Don't expect a Miss Marple sort of sleuthing though, for this lady has Alzheimer and therefore only a rather precarious grasp of all the words she knows.
Thus, she is limited in expressing her suspicions, which creates the entire driving force behind this novel.
It's an intriguing concept, but this is less of an odd detective novel and more of an old person journey, complete with trips down memory lane and navigating the changing modern world (insert a strategically placed trans person of color here to make a point).
It is difficult for people with intact memory to know what it must be like for someone who is losing theirs. The author did a pretty good job of imaging that, down to some clever world play. Interestingly, his protagonist remains remarkably upbeat through it all, wither because she's just that Australian or because it's just that kind of a novel.
The book is too feel-good by design for a lot of poignancy but has a main character likable enough to override that at time. It is a very quick, easily marketable and digestible read, so if you're into that sort of thing, go for it. Thanks Netgalley.

This was a funny book in the vein of Fredrik Backman and the Thursday Murder Club. Rose is a wonderful character and her story is very heartfelt. Don't think about this one too deep- just enjoy it.

This is a story about Rose, an octogenarian and her day-to-day musings of her life in an elderly care home. The reader meets Rose on the day that her friend is found dead in the care-home parking lot, appearing to have jumped from her bedroom window. Rose then decides to embark on a voyage to discover her friend’s murderer. Did I mention that Rose suffers from dementia? So her life musings and subsequent investigation into her friend’s untimely death are often filled with Confucius…or is it confusion? And funnings…er fumblings….that confuse her even more.

Author, Bruce Nash, takes the reader on a journey of word-play and captures the mind of a protagonist that no longer possesses the ability to move smoothly from thought to thought; its peppered with bits of humor and clever word-play. Sounds unique, novel, clever, witty, and just plain fun, doesn’t it? Often it is compared to the brilliance of Fredrik Backman’s characters and plots as well as Richard Osman’s, Thursday Murder Club series. But it’s not…far from it, in fact.

The book starts strong, and I found myself chuckling at Rose’s expressions and word play, but this soon felt very stale and tiresome…and much too kitschy, lacking a plot as well as sound character development…

But perhaps this is what Nash was attempting? She is an octogenarian with rather advanced dementia, after all.

Since this was an ARC when I read it, I stayed with it to the bitter end, but if this was one I chose to read for pleasure, I would have abandoned it about a quarter of the way through. Her musings to which I found myself initially chuckling, soon became tiresome and oppressive.

Thank you to Atria Books via Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.