In the novel 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 & 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘦, a reality television program of the same name shows a contestant living out different iterations of his or her life. In each of the ten episodes of a season, the contestant follows a path that branches out from a choice he or she makes about love, family, or career, thanks to a scientific discovery called “quantum bubbling.” Season 3 heroine Marsh is an ordinary woman living an unspectacular life in suburban Phoenix, Arizona. She is a sweet and kind person, loyal and dependable friend, devoted single mom, and former law student-turned-paralegal. But in other realities in which she is less passive and more confident and daring, she is luckier in love, holds a more impressive career, and leads a more glamorous lifestyle.

The structure of 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 & 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘦 is a fun one, set up like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Opportunities are given to the reader throughout the novel to select between two different paths until one of three conclusions is reached. What if Marsh had repaired her relationship with her ex-husband? Or she gave a renewed relationship with high school sweetheart Ren a proper go? What if she had taken the bar exam after all? Or she pursued a job in a completely different field? It’s a very fitting concept given the storyline as well as the book’s ruminations on choice and true happiness.

I admit I chose the option to read straight through to the intended ending… and I’m wondering if that was the correct decision. Though the plot was captivating at times, the storytelling wasn’t as tight as I would have liked and seemed a bit long-winded to me. I felt like it took much too long to get to the central conflict, and once it was revealed, the momentum continued at a slow, almost sluggish pace, despite the action and thriller components of the storyline.

But overall I do applaud the imaginative plot and interesting framework of 𝘈𝘭𝘭 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 & 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘦. I would recommend this to those who are looking for a unique reading experience and enjoy the vibes of 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘔𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳, 𝘞𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘰𝘯, and 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘸. Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to thank NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on July 9, 2024.

"The reader decides what she does next to change her fate."
This caught my attention and I picked up this book to know how the author has penned down a story where the reader gets to choose the fate the character in the book.
The author has definitely weaved in a beautiful plotline and the characters are interesting in itself, so it kept me hooked till the very end of it.

Hmm…this is a fascinating idea. What if you could have endless do-overs at pivotal points of your life? I’m sure we all have a few things in our past we’d like to rewrite. I can think of some things I’d want to prevent from happening in the lives of my loved ones…but in this story, you can only change things in YOUR life.

In this case, Marsh is the lucky lady chosen for season three of the famous reality show, “All This And More”, wherein the sole contestant has the past at her fingertips. What if you could see how each path turned out…and just choose yet another one if you aren’t satisfied? The science here is glossed over and explained away as a breakthrough in quantum mechanics that allows this selective time travel, so just go along with it. This also has Choose Your Own Adventure-type options throughout, which made the reading experience even more fun.

Things are going great for Marsh….until they aren’t. Something is off. It’s okay, though—she can just move onto the next life, right?

Right?

My only (minor) quibble here is the same one I had with Shepherd’s “The Book of M”—it’s much longer than it needs to be. I think it would be a better book at 75-100 pages shorter, at least. However, it’s still highly entertaining as is, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I would happily read another Peng Shepherd book, and I was thrilled to get an ARC of this one. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow!

4.25 stars!

This book is incredibly creative and like nothing I’ve read before which I’ve come to expect from Shepherd. My issue with it was that I just did not like the main character, Marsh. She drove me nuts and seemed frankly, a little dumb and immature. This took a bit of story away for me.

I had some difficulties with the unconventional structure of this book and reading it in ebook form. I'm very interested in seeing the print version when it's released as it may resolve some of the issues I had with repetition within the plot (perhaps the "rules" will be easier to follow and I can understand what is deliberately nonlinear as opposed to my inability to read it the way it was intended).

I enjoyed the concept of this book very much. I think a lot more could be said about reality TV and audience engagement and production that wasn't explored. I had a little trouble feeling sympathetic to the character, though, who was handed everything, repeatedly, and had no gratitude for it and also seemed to have a lot of problems parsing what looked obvious to me as a reader -- the briefcase? Over and over?

I wish I had enjoyed this as much as I liked The Cartographers, but I felt myself having to work to push through whatever was going on with the structure of the galley itself, which made things in the plot overly repetitive, and my irritation with the main character. Again, I could change my mind when I see this in print. I also wonder if print readers will have a different experience than e-book readers.

I loved the premise of this book. Who doesn't want to read an adult version of a "create your own adventure" book? I was really into it initially; however, it felt like it took too long to get to the more "thriller" aspect of this novel for me and I think I still have questions (and yes I read all three possible ending options to see which one I liked the best). 😂

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved the way this book was written and the ability it gave the reader to choose a direction for the main character, Marsh. It's definitely a more sophisticated choose-your-own-adventure book. The premise of the book is very interesting, and as a reader, I could relate to the idea of wanting to change portions of your life or improve your future if given the chance - so I could relate to the main character's desire to do so. But, at times, I found the story a bit hard to follow and a tad convoluted. It seemed to drag slightly in parts, and I found myself wanting to skip ahead. However, overall, this book was a unique and enjoyable read.

All This and More is an extremely creative concept brilliantly executed. This book was so cool! There’s really no other way to describe it. On top of the ability to choose the plot’s next direction, Shepherd also pulls off an increasingly disturbing atmosphere mixed with romantic angst and tension. For some reason I could not get David Egger’s The Circle out of my head. The ability to make different choices to remake your reality seems like exactly the type of technology that would be extremely dangerous in the hands of most people.

I loved making choices for Marsh, some good and some bad. While some events were eventually inevitable, like with any of our choices, it was fun to change how I got there. I enjoyed all three of the endings, each phenomenal in their own way. Then, I of course had to go back and explore all the different paths. It’s no easy thing to pull off all these different plot points and tie them together in a way that makes sense no matter the reader’s choices. This is an incredible feat and easily Shepherd’s best work yet!

This story is for anyone who wished they could go back and reread this favorite novel again like it’s the first time. With this story, you actually can!

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Peng Shepherd is a genius. I loved The Cartographers for how Shepherd creatively told a story about copyright law as it pertained to mapmaking. In this book, Shepherd is just as creative in her storytelling, if not more so. Here, the reader chooses the adventure by following the protagonist, Marsh, as she appears on a reality show in hopes of improving her life. Marsh must make a series of choices to decide which life she prefers. Along the way, however, issues and a mystery persist that Marsh must resolve. Or not. Up to you! What is reality, anyway?

I read the book straight through with the default choices, but plan to reread and choose the alternatives to see how that story flows. Excluding assigned reading for law school, this may be the first book I have read into the wee hours in more than a decade because I could not put it down. This is also the first time in a long time that I wanted more from a book, not less, and the book is about 500 pages. I cannot decide if I am satisfied with the ending (endings?), but isn’t thinking about a book after reading it one of the best parts of a good book? This was so fun and I cannot wait to discuss the book with my book club this summer!

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

I adored this book. I literally could not out it down trying to see what would happen to our FMC, Marsh. The nostalgia for choose your own adventure books (and my love for the Cartographers) is what made me want to read this book. What an amazing feat this author pulled off. To have this many choices/endings and still have it make sense is astonishing. I loved the mystery within the book as well with what was really going on.

Highly recommend and I will absolutely buy the physical copy of the book when it comes out just to make sure that I actually read all the options.

Thank you netgalley, the publisher, and of course Peng Shepherd for this eARC.
Please see more of my review on Instagram - @bookish_starry_skies

***Side note - when I opened this book on my Kindle, it started at the second chapter. I'm glad that I realized it and went back otherwise I would have missed some important stuff, so in case this happens to you, make sure you go back!

1.5 - Ahh I hate to give this such a low rating because the concept behind it sounded so cool and I was very excited! I loved choose your own adventure books as a kid, and was really excited to see the idea built upon in this book. Unfortunately this book ranked low for me for a few reasons. The first was just that it felt so unbelievably long. It dragged and dragged to the point that I was excited for it to be done. It felt really repetitive. The second reason is that the main character was not very strong or well developed. I don’t enjoy passive characters, and Marsh was just very passive the entire book. I felt like she did not get any stronger or more developed throughout the story. There is a mystery going on, with clues and direct comments thrown in her face and she just kind of sits around and lets things happen to her. This leads into my third gripe, which was that there was too much focus on her alternate life paths rather than the mystery, and the life paths were too fantastical and unbelievable that they did not hold my attention. It was just too out there for me to take seriously. I was interested in the weird patterns and repeated words/themes but the main character kept ignoring them. The fourth was that I felt there were too many storylines that weren’t followed to completion or that the main character just didn’t care about or get upset enough over. A lot of things felt very half-baked to me and Marsh didn’t seem to care when some twists were revealed. Overall, this book didn’t hold my attention, partially due to a passive main character, and I felt the plot wasn’t fully developed.

Thank you to William Morrow and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

All This and More is a science fiction, coming of age, choose your own adventure story. Marsh has a chance at rewriting her life, literally, when she is chosen as the next contestant on the groundbreaking reality television show All This and More. Thanks to advances in quantum theory, contestants in the Bubble can try alternate versions of their life and choose which outcome they want to experience in the real world.

This book has a very interesting concept and a super unique story. I was worried that it would be like the "choose your own adventure" books that were popular when I was a kid. Those always felt a bit unsatisfying because it never felt like the story was advancing.

This book does have some elements of letting the reader choose where to go next in the story, but no matter what, the story does advance and it is such an interesting and unique concept. I highly enjoyed this book. It was extremely easy to read and I read it in one day. I could see this being made into an actual movie. It is written that well.

This book does have one open door scene, but the author kindly allows you to bypass it by creating a choice juncture right before that chapter. I thought this was kind and thoughtful of the author though I'm not sure that scene needed to be included in the book at all.

I highly recommend this book.

If you're up for a mind-bending, unconventional, intelligent, futuristic, shocking, bizarre, extra-eccentric, and complex read, then this book is tailor-made for you.

Imagine having a magical technological wand that allows you to rewrite your life story, refining it countless times until it's perfect in your eyes. What if there was a reality TV show that turned you into a star, manipulating the strings of your life like a puppet master, delving into the main logic of quantum physics and jumping into different realities until you find the one that suits you best? But what if you didn't choose the best one, leaving behind a potentially far less perfect life?

In this mind-crushing novel, we meet Marsh, a 45-year-old recently divorced housewife raising a music prodigy daughter. After leaving her cheating husband of a 20-year marriage, she feels depressed, believing she hasn't accomplished anything in her life. But what if she didn't give up her law school dreams to raise her daughter? What if she could be a hotshot lawyer and have a second chance at her marriage or even reunite with her high school sweetheart, Ren? With the opportunity to join the third season of the reality show, host Talia, who was also a contestant in the first season, is there to help her embrace her dreamy future.

However, as Marsh explores the endless possibilities in her life, striving to make everything perfect, she encounters numerous inconsistencies that blur her mind. The season progresses, and instability grows: breaks in the continuity of her life, fragments of memories left on cast members, old pathways encroaching on new ones, and mysterious deleted texts from an unknown user. Is she trapped in a delusional bubble from which she cannot escape? Is embracing her less perfect life the only path to freedom?

Reading this book is like being trapped in a labyrinth: you keep turning the pages to escape, only to find yourself back where you started, jogging like a hamster on a treadmill. It's smart, mind-shattering, and incredibly original. I couldn't stop reading and marveling at the author's brilliant mind.

I'll admit this book isn't for everyone; it will undoubtedly garner mixed reviews. Some readers may find the premise confusing or disappointing, while others will be enthralled by it. Thankfully, I'm one of the fans who consider this the author's best work. I highly recommend it to sci-fi lovers and anyone bold enough to get lost in the abyss of possibilities and enjoy the wild ride.

Many thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for providing me with a digital review copy of this fantastic sci-fi novel in exchange for my honest opinions.

OMG! That was so fun! Thank you, thank you, thank you, NetGalley and William Morrow Books for the advanced reader’s copy. I read The Cartographer’s and completely loved it so this book was already on my radar and boy, did it not disappoint. Completely different premise than The Cartographer’s, but still super fun with a little strange mixed in. This is Reality TV sci-fi choose your own adventure for adults. I could not put it down. Who hasn’t thought about going back in time and doing something different in your past? Well, this book gives those possibilities in choose your own adventure format. Wish you didn’t mess up a relationship? Wish you chose a different career? All on reality television. Really makes you think able those life choices. I’ll be recommending this book to everyone.

Big fan of this author's last book!
The story's concept was creative, engaging & original but ultimately the plot became too convoluted and story was way too long.

With thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow Books for this e-ARC.