Ok so I’m the upside, it didn’t drag. It also had good Alzheimer rep. On the many downsides though...
Firstly, I thought it was pretty repetitive. I noticed that the author reused sentences, which I don’t know, sounds a bit weird? Also, Laine just kept going on about the same things again and again but not doing anything useful about them. I don’t get the whole divorce thing and her finding someone else in like 30% at the end of the book. I did like her relationship with her sisters and how she was taught that she can stand up for herself. Again with the randomness, but she kept going on about how she didn’t want to raise a non existent baby in New York, it had to be Ann Arbor, for no real reason. I don’t know, I need a little more than that. And this is totally personal opinion but I did think it was kinda selfish that she put her needs before her mother’s. Like, I get that you need your own life to some degree, but you kinda do have to drop everything for your parents, especially if they are vulnerable. Oh well, each to their own.
Anyways, a fun women’s fic that I would probably recommend, despite the low rating
Spice rating:
🌶- like one or two super mild kisses, focus isn’t really on the romance

thank you to the publisher, and the author for letting me read an ARC of this amazing
story through NetGalley.

This was a really sweet and quick read . I enjoyed the main character struggle and relation ship with her family her dillemmas and the path she was on to personal growth. It was good overall .although I did not enjoy the part about their divorce it could have been written more properly.
my rating is 3/5 stars

3.5 stars.
This was a predictable but cute, light read (though it does deal with Alzheimer's). The main character, Laine, is a people pleaser who eventually comes to terms with the fact that she needs to start making herself happy. Without giving too much away, it's also a story about friendship, and her bond with her sisters and mom. The ending felt a little rushed to me because there were some loose ends that weren't tied up. Maybe we are just supposed to assume everything was happily ever after and she continued with her organizing business when she returned home, and Josh's app launch was successful?
Overall a cute, fast read. Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

Thank-you to netgalley and the publisher for the advanced review copy.

Publication date: April 2022

After telling her husband of over a decade she wants a divorce because she wants kids and he isn't ready, Laine's sister calls to say that she's needed back home in Brooklyn right away.

As if admitting to a failed marriage isn't enough, Laine  learns that her mother, Sally, isn't doing so well and is forgetting things. But Sally hasn't completely forgotten everything about her past. As she comes to terms with her fate, she prepares to tell her daughters the truth she's kept well hidden over the years.

Overall, it was good.

There were aspects of this book I liked and some I didn't.

What I liked:
Sally's character was intriguing and heartbreaking. I enjoyed the few chapters in her POV providing insight into the mind of someone with Alzheimers. I also liked Sally's backstory and would have happily read more about her life.
Laine and Ben's relationship was my favourite one; it felt real and was full of emotion.

What I didn't like:

Laine and Josh's relationship was odd and not believable. After more than a decade of marriage, I'd expect more emotion when deciding to part. The way that went down and Josh remaining in the family was odd. I also didn't like the implied chemistry between Josh and Laine's sister, and the fact that Laine gave her sister the okay to 'go for it' was disturbing.
I also found much of Laine's mind chatter to be repetitive. As a result, I didn't care for her much throughout.

Overall, most characters were interesting with enough depth, and the story gripping enough to keep me reading until the end.  The ending wrapped up nicely.

CW: parental loss, infertility, and early onset dementia

This was a 2.75 for me, but rounded up to 3.

I enjoyed the writing style and voice of this book, and the overarching message was poignant, but the delivery left me a little put off.

Laine is a professional organizer who believes everything has a place and that there is a place for everything. She is calculated and methodical with all she does, so it comes as a complete shock to everyone (including herself!) when she tells her husband she wants a divorce. She returns home to help her mother who is suffering from memory loss and is met with an onslaught of unresolved issues with many people ranging from siblings to former friends.

This is where it began to lose me.... Laine has very complicated relationships with her sisters and her mother. Her mother is manipulative and spiteful. Her sisters are inconsiderate and selfish and Laine doesn't really do much about it. Plus, they are all SOOOOO attached to the husband she wants to divorce. Her sister has an odd "friendship" with him and Laine doesn't have the slightest problem with it. He remains part of the family no matter the outcome and it's just a little farfetched and frankly, bizarre.

I do like Ben and Laine's friendship, BUT I cannot get on board with relationships that begin while a marriage is still binding. Yes, Laine and Josh's relationship was over for all intents and purposes, but they were still legally married. Couldn't she have waited?!

Overall there were parts of the book I liked and I could relate to the voice and internal dialogue of Laine, but other than that it wasn't a must read for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Overall, Everything Must Go is a beautifully written exploration of family, love, and memory. The book is shorter, and fairly quick to read, but still manages to achieve thematic depth.

This book is mostly character-driven, mostly for the better. On the positive side, the characters are delightfully complex. Even as relationships change or break, individuals are not vilified as bad people, but rather mismatched in a fundamental way. Often in books, a breakup or falling out is justified by one character's malice, but Pagán is skillful enough to be able to avoid this. Additionally, while I often find plot centered around internal conflict (i.e. having to chose one thing or another) to be tedious and frustrating, it was fitting and well executed here. It was also easy to keep track of the characters, their roles, and their personalities.

On the other hand, and the reason I give this four instead of five stars, is that I would have also liked more to happen in the physical world, either as an extension of the internal conflict, or in addition, For example, I was hoping that Laine would use her organization skills to help clean her mother's house, which would have also been symbolic in many ways. I wanted to see her business take off, rather than start to take off/plateau around the climax. These physical conflicts added to the internal conflict (i.e. her having to choose to her mother vs organizing the friends' house) but would have taken the rest of the plot to another level.

The handling of dementia was well-done. Initially I was unsure of the use of Sally's POV, but overall I came to appreciate it. I also liked the addressing of the importance of boundaries, how to set them in a positive way, and balancing choosing what is best for you and what is best for others.

"Everything Must Go" is a modern day family drama set in Brooklyn, New York and Ann Arbor in Michigan. The central characters are 3 sisters and their mother. Hadley, Laine and Piper all grew up in New York city but Laine moved away for college, and stayed away. The story starts with a call for help as oldest sister Hadley asks Laine to visit their mother as she suspects her of having dementia.

As the sisters deal with the issues in their own lives they also have to cope with their mother's increasingly forgetful ways. The different strands of the story include mother/daughter and sibling relationships, coping with old age, marriage issues and fertility. There are lies and misconceptions to be uncovered along the way as the family reach a new level of understanding.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publishers for the opportunity to review this book.

Oh how do you wrap up this book in words when it’s touched your soul?!? Camille Pagán is the master of true art when it comes to crafting words into a story. The story flows like an oil painting on a canvas. A family comes together when their mom is having health issues, a sisters marriage is in trouble yet they all come together to find the right fit to make it all work out. Every story Camille writes blows me away and leaves me emotionally breathless. Highly recommend anyone who hasn’t read her books to do so asap.

I absolutely loved this! What a fantastic plot, beautifully written, intertwining the relationships between the characters in such an ingenious and realistic way.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Poor Laine’s desperate desire for a baby has been postponed for so long that she might not even get to be the sandwich generation, and it’s easy for her sisters, with several children each, to expect Laine to disrupt her life and be the caregiver. A quick, enjoyable read about sisters, daughters, and mothers (and dog lovers and cat lovers).

I find the Laine and her husband to not be relatable they seem so distant yet he continued to want to stay married but there's no emotion and no connection between the two. The mother seems relatable but after a while I lost interest in continuing to read. 2 stars. DNF


********************************I received an ARC for my honest opinion from NetGalley.**************************************

Quick read with a relatable character struggling with boundaries in her personal and professional life. Some aspects of the main character Laine’s decision making and family dynamics were frustrating to read.

i really enjoyed getting to read this book early. it was so much fun and such a sweet little romance. it made me feel good and that's something i really enjoy in my books. a lovely escape!

My review of: Everything Must Go
(Oh, how I love the title, in fact it was the title and book cover that drew me in).

2.75/5 is my actual rating BUT I rounded up.

Laine, a 38-year-old professional organizer, surprises her husband one morning by asking for a divorce. Why, you ask? Because she wants to be a mother, and her husband isn’t ready to be a father. As if a life decision as drastic as that isn’t enough, her sister calls her up to tell her that she thinks their mother, Sally may have dementia, and she needs her to come home (to New York) to help out. Back home, Laine is at a crossroads. Should she move back to New York to care for her mother? Should she have a baby on her own? Should she rekindle a relationship with her once upon time best friend Ben? Should she get divorced? How will these decisions affect her family, specifically her mother (who has many secrets of her own)? This is a story about a family in distress: mothers, and sisters trying to navigate a horrible disease, and how one sister, Laine, must learn to stand up for her own happiness. It’s sad and tragic (because of her mother’s declining health), but also full of love and hope (surrounding her family and her love interest).

I loved Laine’s growth throughout the novel. From beginning to end there is a clear, distinct, and believable change. The characteristics of all the sisters and the mother were all very strong, they all had distinct character traits that made them feel like real people. The exploration of dementia on the mind, and on a family is strong, detailed, and visceral (There were even a few chapters where we were in Sally’s POV, giving the reader an inside look of what losing one’s memory may look and feel like). I also enjoyed the chemistry between Ben and Laine, their relationship was charming, witty, funny, touching, and authentic.

What I didn’t love so much: some things weren’t believable, like conversations between Laine and her husband regarding the divorce were extremely lacking in emotion, everything just seemed too easy. You would think after so many years together (I believe 15) the characters would react and behave differently about ending their marriage. I also felt like the ending was too neatly tied up. Sometimes a novel can have an ending that is too ambiguous, leaving the readers scratching their heads, and sometimes it can be too mushy, fluffy, cheesy, wrapped with a pretty bow that can make one roll their eyes a little. I didn’t exactly roll my eyes at the ending, but I did feel like it was too neat an ending. Also, I felt like there were too many repetitions throughout, almost like the author needed to reach a certain word count, and therefore kept repeating the same sentiments over and over and over again for filler. The novel could have benefited from either more actual storytelling and less repetition or might have worked better as a short story/novella (take a lot of the fluff, repetitive stuff out, giving the story more of a punch).

Overall, it wasn’t my favourite, but the writing was decent, the descriptions strong, and the family dynamics/struggles/drama were good enough to keep me interested until the end.

Thank you to #netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

It’s a wonderfully well written and well paced book. Though, I’m not really a fan of multiple POVs, however, shockingly, it didn’t really bothered me that much when I was reading it. I loved how the whole family dynamic has been dealt with and portrayed. Also, sometimes I felt that the main MC is just being indecisive, ‘cause she wanted to say no to the things but instead she ends up saying yes to them, because she has yet to learn it and don’t how to, without sounding as rude and making the another party small and unhappy. Despite that, it was one fun read for me.

When I requested an Arc for this book I had a different idea for this book. I wished they would’ve stated it had different pov. I don’t like books with multiple pov as it can get confusing at times. I found this book a little boring. I felt like Laine was pressured into saying yes when she wanted to say no to things. I did enjoy watching the relationship between her mom and her sisters grow.

It's a beautiful journey of self reflection and exploring family relationships. I absolutely loved the sense of moral obligation battling with the wanting to do your own thing and find your own way.
Laine's character goes through some of the hardest things that life can throw at you and the self discovery she has along the way is so wonderful to see in a character, as even down to the last minute you don't know if she will follow her heart or do what is seen to be right.

Her relationship with her mother is written so beautifully, as it shows all the ups and downs, all the little flaws that can really build up and change a person so to see that written so that it feels real is incredible.

Five stars forsure! Slow start but then a beautiful narrative emerges! I love the way that the main character has autonomy in her decisions as she comes to realize what is best for her and her life. I also love that she is empowered to make choices for her independence.

I'm giving this book a solid three stars, with my points below on why. When I read what the book was about and the way the title is represented, I thought this novel would reflect a woman who's marriage is in the air while having to deal with her sick elderly mother. I thought the title meant more in terms that since the marriage was over, she would start completely over. That's not what happened at all.

Laine is a professional organizer from New York but currently resides in a small town in Michigan. Within the first chapter, you learn her beloved pet whom she's had for 15 years passed away, she wants a baby so somebody needs her and she asked her husband for a divorce. As the story unfolds, we learn Laine has two sisters and a mother they suspect to have dementia.

Laine packs a suitcase and heads to New York to be with her family and to really think about whether she wants a divorce. Throughout the story, we experience the story from two point of views. One from Laine and one from Sally, her mother. In the chapters that Sally narrates, they are pretty lucid and easy to follow. Oh, by the way, Laine runs into her ex best friend who she's in love with while in New York (Ben, that's important for later).

Throughout the book, I felt that dealing with a family member with dementia was pretty accurate. I can also understand the struggle of wanting to be a mother while your husband doesn't. However, I found the book a bit boring. It seemed like it ran in constant circles of Laine saying yes to all the things she wants to say no. Laine doesn't want to live in New York. I don't know how many times I read that, yet she still contemplated it. I know that the character building was intended to build Laine into having more of a backbone when it's doing what she wants rather than what her family wants. It just fell flat for me though, it seemed like once she finally had Ben whispering into her ear, she grew her backbone.

Which leads me to my next point. I think this story would have been a lot better if Ben wasn't involved at all. If Laine had the chance to explore what motherhood meant to her while being a single woman, while trying to figure out the best route for her mom and growing the courage she needed all by herself. Ben didn't add a lot other than past time of a 16 year old grudge, settling for a man who she loves but I'm not sure she was ever in love with and a happy ending. I mean, if you hold a grudge for that long - are you really able to fall into the arms of the same man within a few days after deciding with your husband that the divorce will be done? It just doesn't make sense to me and the more I think about it, the less sense it makes to me with the timeline in the book.

I did enjoy this book, I think it explored raw emotions when having to become a caretaker. I wouldn't read it again though.

While having to confront the heart wrenching reality of an aging parent, Laine also has to confront that maybe her reality isn’t want she truly wants. Back in Brooklyn after 16 years away, Laine needs to figure out if she’s ready to make the moves to become the person she wants to be or continue to be the people pleaser she’s always been?

Everything Must Go is another wonderful story by Camille Pagan. This time focusing on the relationships between three sisters and their ailing mother Pagan once again drops you into the middle of the family. She has such a wonderful way of making the reader experience the heartache, love and joy of her characters.