Wow, this book is INTENSE.

So, Harper goes on a journey to find her biological father (a sperm donor). She feels like she has to in order to understand herself. In the process, she finds not only herself, but also a family.

This book critically and realistically looks at the way the pandemic affected teenagers. It also explores the way social media and always being connected amplify our anxieties.

To be 100% honest, this book was HARD to read. It’s a lot of internal dialogue that I recognize in myself. All of the things Harper struggles with, I struggle with. It’s also really dense. I had to read this book in parts because I couldn’t handle it all at once.

I think that a lot of teenagers will relate to her story. HOWEVER, it feels like it’s written for an older age group.

Overall, a very insightful read. Thank you Random House Childrens for the opportunity to read this book! My review is live on Goodreads.

Thoughts

This book is perhaps the best straight-up contemporary book I've read so far this year. The writing is decent, easy to follow. The setting is uniquely tropical, and the story is different--it stands out. Overall, this is a solid contemporary read.

Pros
Slice of Terrible Life: The reality unfolding behind this book is cold and harsh, but for Harper, it is just life. She's struggling to stay afloat in the aftermath of 2020, juggling masking uncertainty, COVID fear, and what it means to be vaccinated as new variants make their way onto the scene. The sense of lost opportunity and drifting friends after worldwide catastrophe also plays a part--and a blasé sort of active-shooter drill (unfortunately too familiar to many) makes its way into these pages as well.

Doom Scrolling: Harper is struggling, clashing with her mom, wrestling with newfound family, trying to make sense of her "father's" roll when he was, quite literally, just a sperm donor. Social media doesn't help. The endless scrolling, filling her life with the background noise of airbrushed perfection and fatalistic shouting doesn't help. This aspect of modern life was capture so, so well in the midst of a story, seemingly, about something else.

Island Paradise: There's something so perfectly escapist about a group of newly-discovered siblings jetting away to a tropical island after a year of lockdown. Learning to deep-sea dive, encountering tropical wildlife, and tanning poolside with a good pup is just a bonus. Harper's new family might be family by blood, but they're also connected in more ways than that, bonding in a way that's so refreshing to read.


Cons
You: I'm not going to lie. The opening here was rough for me, grammatically. Most won't agree with me on this point, but wonky grammar still makes my mind spin. The casual slipping into second person, seemingly without great intention, in the opening pages was quite jarring. I found it hard to settle into the narrative for this reason. Luckily, this usage petered out as the story unfolded into itself.

Food Focus: Some readers beware--Harper's mother (and her social media feed) are very food-conscious. Those who might struggle to read about "healthy" versus "unhealthy" food, about bakery and sweet treat avoidance, about ideal fitness level... You should be cautious here. Harper's narrative drifts far, far away from this line of thought, but it is particularly present at the start.

Gen Z Clickbait: As accurate as Harper's doom scrolling might be, I found it very hard to believe that she was paying so much attention to clickbait titles like "The 2 Foods You Must Avoid to..." Certainly, this garbage type of clickbait makes up a fair bit of Internet noise, but Harper seems to engage with this content far more than anyone--and I do mean anyone--from Gen-Z is likely to. There are all kinds of pressures being thrown at Gen Z from Internet culture, but this sort of clickbaity stuff is much more effective at sucking in older generations, not the generation who live and breathe Internet. Harper's engagement here just didn't feel realistic.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
8/10

Fans of Emma Lord's You Have a Match will like this story of newly-discovered family. Those who enjoyed Robin Benway's Far From the Tree will like this new group of siblings trying to figure things out together.

I have had a complicated relationship with Deb Calleti's books in the past. I think her ideas are always very ambitious but it is in the follow-through that I have historically had the most problems with. Sometimes, the book takes on too much that it can foreseeably wrap up in the span of the novel. I really enjoyed the exploration of a different family dynamic in this book. All the siblings felt unique enough on their own but their similarities also shone through very well. Our main character was also very interesting to me because I didn't find her all that likeable, which made for a different reading experience. She had her own flaws like very other character and I appreciated the author's drive to not confine any of their characters into their archetypical roles. The discussion of the pandemic was not my favorite. Although it was often mentioned, it didn't seem like it impacted the plot all that much and I'm not sure if it needed to be included. The last thing I will say is that I didn't love to reveal towards the end as I found it very predictable and brought up a whole other can of worms that couldn't be fully fleshed out. A solid book, very ambitious.

THE EPIC STORY OF EVERY LIVING THING is the story of Harper Proulx, who embarks on a journey of personal truth and growth when she discovers her mother has been lying to her for her entire life about her sperm donor father. When she connects with a half-sibling over the internet, it’s just the catalyst she needs to travel to Hawaii to meet her father, learn about her paternal side, and hopefully find the answers she’s been searching for.

Emotionally charged and deeply moving at times, this was such a fantastic read from start to finish that made me question plenty of things in my own life and imagine what I would do if I were in Harper’s shoes. Would I want to know who fathered me? Would I be as brave as she was and travel halfway across the US to find him? Would I be emotionally wrecked if he didn’t want to have anything to do with me? Harper was a fantastically brave young woman, and I loved her willingness to be incredibly vulnerable in order to seek the answers that will make her feel whole.

All told, I adored this book and I adored Harper. This book will make you laugh, make you think, maybe make you shed a tear or two as Harper searches for answers about who she truly is. Highly recommend.


*Many thanks to TBR and Beyond Tours and the publisher for providing a digital arc for an Instagram tour.

Book Review

Title: The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti

Genre: Contemporary, Family, Drama

Rating: 3.75 Stars

Review: The opening to The Epic Story of Every Living Thing was interesting and while it wasn’t that exited I was drawn into the story. We are introduced to Harper who is your average self-conscious, anxious teenager obsessed with the way she looks and how others see her but there is something different that sets Harper apart and that is she is a speed donor baby who wants to know who her father is. Harper throughout her life has found a few others that look just like her and she knows they must be at least half-siblings but she doesn’t contact them, only keeps an eye on their social media profiles. Harper does well in school and has an amazing boyfriend in Ezra but I feel that she doesn’t appreciate him enough as she is constantly worrying about 100 different things and I can’t wait to see where this goes.

As we approach the 1/4 mark in the novel, I was really disliking Harper as a main character as she uses her anxiety as an excuse to treat people horribly and make herself feel better which isn’t nice at all. The first part of this is how she uses Ezra to make herself feel better even when he is showing off his prom outfit all she can think about is getting pictures of him to post on Instagram so her followers will tell her how lucky she is so she can actually feel that way. We can see how it affect Ezra and Harper is aware of it and does it anyway even though she knows he doesn’t like it. This is further shown when she contacts Dario, her half-brother and she treats him so badly. In their first conversation he lets slip that there are over 40 children from this speed donor and Harper is so overwhelmed that she hangs up which I understand but then she ignores him for days even though he is concerned about her. Then when she realises that Dario has met Simone she tears into him like he didn’t have the right to contact her even though she is also his half-sister. The only good thing to come out of this is that Harper and Dario meet for the first time and Harper understands how lonely she has been and Dario also has a picture of their father and his name, Beau Zane. However, everything up to this point has felt like a massive prologue meaning the pace is slow and I was more than a little bored.

As we cross the 1/4 mark in the novel, I was struggling to cope with Harper as a main character as she is so unlikeable to the point where she comes across as an asshole. She is constantly cutting off Dario and hurting him and even though she is aware of it she doesn’t fee, bad about it blaming her anxiety and distress rather than owning up to her appalling behaviour. This is shown even more when Ezra finally dumps her after on of her photo expeditions and I completely agree with him, for the entirety of their relationship we have seen Harper treated him more like an assistant than a boyfriend always wanting him to drive her somewhere or carry her equipment and then have the audacity to say she doesn’t know why he dumped her after she reveals that she has known about her siblings and father for several months and not even brought it up to him. She didn’t even have to tell him everything all she had to say was she was looking to track down her father and he would have supported her but she has hidden from him and lied to him repeatedly over the past few months so I can’t feel any sympathy for her when she is being a bad person and hiding behind her anxiety and insecurities as excuses for this behaviour. Dario, Wyatt and Simone have tracked down their father and learnt he is dive instructor which is why he moves around a lot and they want to go track him down since Wyatt’s family has a summer home near where they think he is currently staying but I have a feeling that Harper isn’t going to be on board and she is going to make the other feel bad for wanting to find him.

As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, the four children end up deciding to travel to Hawaii and after her breakup it is an impulsive decision on Harper’s part. Even telling her mother turned into a fight because of Harper and she didn’t even stop and consider that her feelings weren’t the only ones that mattered during this situation and when her mother asks for her to tell Beau nothing about does it finally click. The journey to Hawaii is nerve racking for most of them and they decide to spy on Beau’s house which results in some major bonding moments for these siblings. The next day they decide to go to the dive shack and introduce he selves to Beau if he is there which he obviously is and he is just as shocked and anxious as they are. This first meeting wasn’t all hugs and smiles but it’s wasn’t rejection either, I think that Beau genuinely blocked out the possibility that he might have kids somewhere out in the world and these four children in front of him all built him up in their minds and were a little disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations but there is still a lot of hope in them that they might be able to form a bond with him the way they have done with each other. I really don’t get the significance of the ancient diary entries at the beginning of each chapter as they feel like they are telling an entirely different story and I am finding it a little distracting to be honest.

As we cross into the second half of the novel, there are some bumps in the beginning of the relationship between a father and his children which was nice to see that everything wasn’t immediately going to be perfect. Beau despite not being the marrying type wanted children of his own and decide to become a sperm donor to give something selfless to women that wanted children but couldn’t and he hoped that one day someone might come looking for him and he got four instead of one with many more out there. The initial couple of interaction between them all are messy and uncoordinated with hope and disappointment and possibly love all hanging the balance but they really begin to bond when Beau teaches them to dive, sharing something personal with them since it has been in his blood for generations. He also shares the impending disaster that will envelope his home since the navy wanted to detonate many unexplored bombs in the area regardless of how much wildlife it is going to kill and the old shipwreck it is going to destroy. The ship will be the hardest loss for Beau’s family since his father Tony was obsessed with learning the identity of the ship since he believed it to be Neptune’s Car.

As we approach the 3/4 mark in the novel, the ship is important since it links those opening segments of each chapter to the current story but it also gives the children a more concrete link to their father and his family and they decide they should dive on it. Being away from her phone since it drops into the ocean Harper has come to appreciate living in the moment and this gives her the opportunity to reconnect with Ezra who she hasn’t really spoken to since the breakup and really see him for who he is. She ends up apologising for her behaviour before now she sees how wrong it was. There is some sadness since they learn that their grandfather Tony died due to pandemic and his wife and son weren’t allowed to be with him during that time and they are going to lose a massive link to him when the bombs are set off and Harper wants to do something about it. I can’t wait to see them all five together and see where their relationship goes but I hope that Harper might be able to use some of the following she gained on social media to help with the current situation and maybe make a real life difference something she has never done before without worrying about all the ramifications and consequences. With less than a hundred pages left I was excited to see how Canetti was going to bring the novel to an end but I also didn’t really want it to end. Seeing the love, joy and heartbreak all these character share was infectious and despite not really liking Harper at first she really grew on me as the novel progressed.

As we cross into the final section of the novel, we see everything come together. While there isn’t much in terms of plot since the novel is mainly focused on the characters, their relationships and development it was nice to see a little action towards the end. Overall, I ended up liking this book despite hating Harper for the first half since she changes a lot in the second half as do the other characters. My favourite character by far was Beau and he was just a ,liveable, warm characters with realistic flaws but loved all his children, all 42 of them. Honestly I’ve never been a fan of contemporary books but these types of book are growing on me the older I get.

What an amazing and satisfying coming of age and facing your fears story! The plot follows the main character, Harper Proulx, as she determinedly creates and maintains a "nature girl in symmetry with her environment" persona. It's an elaborate masquerade, though, as Harper is terrified of everything, thanks to her overwhelming exposure to "the sky is falling" content on social media. The stress of maintaining her brand and FOMO is compounded by her helicopter mom's relentless push for safety and academic perfection.

This never-ending cycle of "keeping up" doesn't allow Harper to share her real insecurities, her inner self, or her secret need to find out about her father or her discovery that she's got half-siblings with her faithful boyfriend, Ezra. This unknown conflicts with her perception of her perfect persona. I loved that her need to know trumps her need for safety and leads to adventure and a quirky "found" family. I loved all of the siblings' reawakening to the wonders of life, and the setting in Maui is irresistible, full of mystery and beauty.

Told from Harper's point of view, readers are privy to her thoughts and motivations. I was subtly absorbed into her preoccupation with her social media presence; honestly, it felt normal; she was so effortlessly good at it. In fact, I initially felt Ezra was being overly sensitive. It didn't feel so all-encompassing until it was missing. I had been sucked into Harper's life that completely. But the story changes focus to the real people around Harper, and so does she. It is mind-boggling how easily one can shut out what's right before your eyes and become distracted and absorbed by the allure and massive volume of a "created" online world.

I truly enjoyed the main characters: Harper, Ezra, Dario, Wyatt, Simone, and their new "found" family, including Beau and Greer. I loved that more siblings were occasionally revealed as the story went on. I think it must be a universal desire or need to discover such connections with the many anonymous others out there, hence, the popularity of genetic matching services. And frankly, I could relate to Melissa Proulx, her fears and desires for her child. I can't believe she wouldn't hop on a plane to Maui during all this, though.

Author Deb Caletti has crafted a thoroughly modern tale of discovery: discovering self, identity, and wonder. She captures perfectly that blasé feeling, that sense of inurement to what's going on in the world because of the constant bombardment of news, information overload, and the overwhelming number of calls to action. Her reigniting of wonder felt so pure and simple and joyful.

I recommend THE EPIC STORY OF EVERY LIVING THING to readers of young adult fiction, especially those who enjoy the phenomenon of online life and influencers, the idea of the hunt for DNA relatives, scuba diving, and the around-the-world travels of clipper ships during the mid-1800s.

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy from the author or publisher through "NetGalley" and "TBR and Beyond Book Tours."

Thank you so much @netgalley , @tbrbeyondtours and @debcaletti for the wonderful book in exchange of honest opinion❤️

Personal Rating : ⭐⭐⭐.75 / 5.

To be frank, I don't know how to give words to my emotions. The plot is completely new to me; I've never read a book about sperm donors and the magnitude of how it may affect the lives of future children. The newness of the topic is both good and bad. Good because I love reading unique stories, bad because I don't have any other books to compare with or personal experience to decide how accurate the representation is. One thing for certain, Deb is an excellent storyteller. There are parts when I thought it could have been written better but I love Harper's character. And all other characters. She is a flawed person who seeks love and acceptance on social media, namely on Instagram where she posts pictures with nature, cute photos with Ez, her boyfriend, made perfect by manipulation. Her anxiety tends to spike up in any sort of adverse situations and her mother's controlling nature only makes it worse. The pandemic has also contributed to her mental trauma. She has always felt a void in her heart, lost and unsure of her true identity due to the absence of a fatherly figure in her life. The social media works magic and suddenly she discovers she has more half siblings than she can count with one hand. It was thrilling to watch her progress towards finding her father and wondering what's going to happen next. The character developments were well-done. I can't wait to read Deb's next book!

I had really high expectations for this book, but sadly, it just didn't fully work for me.

Let's start with the fact that Harper is a sperm donor baby. At this point, I've read around 15 books that feature donor conception, and once you've read a certain number, there are so many overlaps between them all. There's the overbearing mother, the fat donor-conceived daughter, the irresponsible donor who has helped create an absurd amount of children, and so many more tropes, all of which combine to create a perception of donor conception that, frankly, makes me feel embarrassed to be donor conceived. I want my identity to be represented in the books I read, but if this is the type of representation I'm getting, do I really want it? At this point, it feels like donor conception is being used solely to sell books -- here's this crazy experience that few people can relate too and isn't the "normal" way of doing things, doesn't that sound like a great premise for a book?

But even ignoring discussion of donor conception, I found this book to be a bit of a slog to get through. I can deal with an unlikeable narrator, but Harper's internal monologue was trying too hard to capture what most adults think teenagers sound like, and the book as a whole was very "phone bad, book good." I've also discovered I do not like books that feature the COVID pandemic as a theme. While THE EPIC STORY OF EVERY LIVING THING does acknowledge that COVID isn't over, it simultaneously stressed the danger the virus created in our daily lives while also completely ignoring the fact that there's a pandemic in-universe?

If you'd like a recommendation for books featuring donor-conceived characters, I highly recommend SPARROW by Sarah Moon and YOU'RE WELCOME, UNIVERSE by Natasha Friend. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Here is the thing: Deb Caletti gets it. I can confidently say this after reading her four most recent titles. Caletti understands what it’s like to be a teenage girl who is dealing with the anxieties of today. This is a book that takes place just after Covid quarantine, and she gets that too. Most books I’ve read that try to talk about it never get it right, but she does. And that’s not even what this is about. It’s about Harper, who is trying to find her a sperm donor father, a journey that takes her to Hawaii with the half-siblings she never knew. Of course, she learns about her family and it’s origins, but she also learns about herself. She learns about nature and how to get off her phone. Harper is a good character, but her siblings shine. Dario is so immediately likable. Also, there’s a sweet dog. Because of all this, I want every teenage girl to read this.

And now, I’m going to get a little personal because I have to when talking about this perfect book. It’s like Caletti crawled into my brain and pulled out every feeling I have. She reminds me that the world is bad all the time, but it is also so, so good. She asks if we will ever stop worrying and makes it okay to not have an answer. And the way she talks about family hits hard. Harper often thinks about how her family makes her feel full, and every time I teared up.

In fact, there are so many small moments in this that made me feel huge emotions. Caletti is an author that gives every reader credit, and makes you feel cared for. I will be purchasing as soon as possible and I will be making everyone I know read it. This is absolutely my favorite Deb Caletti book, and I can’t wait to read it again.

The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti, 416 pages. Labyrinth Road (Random House), 2022. $19. Lgbtqia
Language: R (247 swears, 58 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: PG
BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: HIGH
Harper (17yo) is her mother’s perfect daughter, Ezra’s girlfriend, and an adventure Instagrammer with lots of followers and hearts but without the actual adventures. Secretly, Harper has been trying to figure out who she is by figuring out who her sperm-donor father is. Once she starts learning, though, it’s impossible to un-know what Harper finds.
Living in our post-pandemic time, Harper leans on her phone for support and connection with people from a safe distance. Caletti has captured the addictive nothingness usage of social media in Harper’s stream of consciousness narration. I loved watching Harper’s change as she makes decisions about her life, from how she wants to interact with social media and her phone to what she’s willing to stand up for and make important.
Harper and her relatives are White, and Ezra is Jewish Cuban. The mature content rating is for underage drinking; drug use; mentions of menstruation, condoms, sexual harassment, genitalia, and rape; discussions of sperm and in vitro fertilization; and sex. The violence rating is for mentions of bombs.
Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen

Deb Caletti is a skilled story-teller, weaving together threads of lives and concepts to bring the big picture to life in the individual characters. This is especially true in The Epic Story of Every Living Thing. The beginning was a little slow for me, lacking the depth I’ve come to expect. THe second half of the book more than made up for this. Tackling the issue teens are most defensive about (trust me, I’m a high school teacher), Caletti challenges the concept of telling our most important stories, defined by the number of likes and hearts, through photo apps. She vividly captures the freedom I have watched teens experience when they start gaining control of their phone in contrast to letting them control their life. This book also explores how teens who are alive through the miracle of sperm donation might grapple in unique ways with their identity. While this aspect of the story (as with others) feels overly-romanticized, it is complex and heart wrenching at times. Caletti also sends a powerful message about who family really is, how we stand up for what we believe in, when we should alter our plans to help someone even at the risk of losing out on something we’ve worked hard toward achieving. As an author, she leaves us always with lots of life lessons and lots to think about.

Thank you to Netgalley and Randomhouse Children’s, Labyrinth Road, and the author for early access to this well-crafted novel.

The Epic Story of Every Living Thing is a young adult coming-of-age novel by Deb Caletti. Harper has always lived with the ominous question of who her sperm donor father is. She’s determined to learn about him and wonders if they’re anything alike. When she encounters her half-siblings on the internet they finally uncover their father’s identity. Traveling to Hawaii to finally meet half their DNA, Harper will face harder questions and be forced to learn who exactly she is.

Beautiful, compelling, and motivating are three words I could choose to describe this novel. Harper’s story of finding herself in a post-pandemic world is thoughtful and engaging. I think the struggles that Harper goes through can really resonate with a lot of people, I know it did with me. It was heart-warming to see Harper connect with her half-siblings and father and fully learn who she was meant to be. This book also had some hard-hitting quotes that I’m sure are going to be favorites of mine for a while.

I’d recommend the Epic Story of Every Living Thing to anyone who enjoys young adult contemporary, the journey of finding oneself, and the possibility in everything.

This book is a little different from what I normally would read, but I am glad I read it!

This story follows Harper who suffers from anxiety, has a fantastic boyfriend, and a highly followed account on Instagram. One day, someone comments on one of her posts that she looks exactly like their friend Dario. Harper finds him and sees that they could be twins. She decides to reach out to him, and finds out that there are more like them than just the two of them, that they are all from the same donor. And they decide to meet and try to find their actual father.

This was a very unique story. This has the found family trope, which I absolutely adore that trope, and I loved it in this book! Harper suffers from bad anxiety, especially ever since the pandemic had started. She tends to control it by social media and being on her phone, it helps her to not freak out. Reading this book actually gave me anxiety because you could literally feel the anxiety rolling off of her when reading this book. Her thoughts are a mile a minute, she has questions after questions she asks herself, and she is always thinking ahead and what could happen, etc. I realized, after reading this book, I am a lot like Harper. I have similar anxiety where I tend to think a lot, and think ahead a lot about the what ifs and the maybes, and ask myself a million questions. I guess like an inner monologue happens to me a lot like what happens to Harper a lot in this book. As you read the book, though, you see how she changes and becomes stronger and able to handle her anxiety better by the end of the book. She really transforms, and that's thanks to the new family she finds, and friends she now has that have her back. It may have made me feel very anxious reading the book, but my goodness this story really struck my heartchords, it was just so beautiful to see her change and become this different person who also found a beautiful family to go along with her transformation.

I also love how they may all look a like and are similar in their mannerisms, but Harper, Dario, Wyatt, and Simone are also each so different when it comes to their personalities and their lives. They have their real dad in common, and yet, that is what brings them together and become an actual family. I just loved it so much!

This was truly such a unique read for me, and I'm glad I took the plunge and read it! Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the free digital copy to read. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a unique read when it came to the topics that it dealt with. I can’t say I have ever read a book about a sperm donor. It’s a good topic for a coming of age story and it really helps to connect the characters that find themselves related to one another in an unexpected way.

The book follows one point-of-view and it comes from Harper. Although, there are journal entries at the beginning of the chapters that connect the past to the present. It’s fun to have little details like this that keep you interested.

Harper is a girl who wants to know more about who she is. Growing up with a single parent has left her with a lot of questions. I can understand being curious. It’s always something that is in the back of our mind with a lot of things in our lives. She goes through a lot of discovery and I’m glad that her mother let her do the summer trip. Harper wasn’t always kind to her mother, but at least by the end she understands her a little bit more.

There are times that it felt like the book lulled and didn’t fully keep my attention. I think it was more me than the book.

Overall, this was a good read. I liked reading about a topic I hadn’t before and the growth that Harper has throughout the plot.

Harper has never had a father. Her mother told her that she was conceived through in vitro fertilization using an anonymous sperm donor. Harper is also constantly on Instagram. When a chance comment connects her with a half-sibling, she quickly learned that the sperm donor had 41 other children … all her half-siblings. One of the half-siblings offers to have a few of them to his parent’s condo in Hawaii where they can meet this mysterious donor. With a summer in Hawaii in front of Harper, what will she discover about the man and the shipwreck he is obsessed with? As she spends time with her half-siblings, what additional secrets will be uncovered?

The Epic Story of Every Living Thing is a stand-alone realistic novel that was just different enough to make me want to keep reading to understand the story completely. This book does take place shortly after the Covid-19 shutdown was ended, so the characters deal a little with the fear that everyone was facing at the time, but this is not a pandemic story. I have never really thought about sperm donors having dozens of possible children and the ramifications if they met. This novel was interesting from the start and the twist towards the end had me gasp out loud.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review*

I have been reading Deb Caletti books for years, and there hasn't been a single book of hers that I didn't end up falling in love with. I have been excited about The Epic Story Of Every Living Thing ever since she announced the book, and when the cover was revealed, I was even more eager to read it. Anyone who sees the cover will be curious about the book. It's one of the most breathtaking covers that I have seen, and it tells the story all its own. I was happy that I got approved to read an early copy of this book. Through the years, I have read a few coming of age books, but I have never read a book like The Epic Story Of Every Living Thing . Honestly, this book is one of those stories that I'm having trouble describing all of the emotions that I felt about the book.

Harper. I had mixed feelings in the beginning. I didn't think how she treated her boyfriend at the start wasn't respectful. At first, it seemed as if she was obsessed with social media and how she looked. However, she changed once she went to Hawaii and connected with her sperm donor father and the other half siblings. I believe that Harper had the most character development of all the characters. I loved the connection that Harper made with the others. I loved that Harper was determined to meet her sperm donor father, despite her mother telling her otherwise. The trip to Hawaii changed her and made her a completely different person.

What I loved about The Epic Story Of Every Living Thing is how many real themes were mentioned in the book: anxiety, Covid -19, social media addiction, family, and friends. I have anxiety as Harper did, so I felt I could relate to her in some ways. The story felt so real to me. The beginning started a little slow for me, but once it picked up, I had a hard time putting the book down; I had forced myself to put it down. I couldn't get enough of the story. I would highly recommend this book.

It was…breathtaking.

Beautifully written book by Deb Caletti. I am a fan of Deb Caletti 's writing and this book is no different. Enjoyed reading.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own

ARC from NetGalley -
Not as heavy as A Heart in a Body.., but I enjoyed it. The pacing of the story could have been sped up in places, but I enjoyed the not-so-perfect plot. I don't enjoy books where everything, no matter how knotted, gets resolved in a "bow" at the end of the novel.

In the age of IFV/donor eggs/sperm, this story rings remarkably true. Harper goes on a quest to find out who her "father" really is, and suddenly she has siblings who are remarkably recognizable, and a quest to find the mythical dad they share. While I find the whole "Mom, I'm headed to Hawaii to disappear for a summer" somewhat unbelievable, I enjoyed the story of the dive-bum dad and the challenges that the half-siblings face. Quite enjoyable, and will appeal to many of my HS readers.

cute book of finding oneself and finding her dad. I loved that social media was discussed and the pandemic. I loved that the kids found each other and also tried new things and became a family of sorts. I liked learning about the mom and her relationship with the dad. He ended up having 42 kids by being a sperm donor.