A book that keeps me anxious and guessing until the last page automatically earns five stars. That’s exactly what Natalie Leif’s Take All of Us did to me. I genuinely had no idea what was going to happen next or how the story would end. Imagine watching a TV show and always playing the next episode because you just need to know what happens next. That was the case with Take All of Us. But it wasn't because of cheap cliffhangers. Far from it. In this book, every logical conclusion points in a certain direction until the story reminds the reader of an important overlooked detail. That’s when said reader will respond with, “Oh, right. But then this would mean... oh no!”

What personally sold the book to me was Ian. He was the type of protagonist that resonated with me from the start. He reminded me of my teenage self in many ways: the angst, the anxiety, and the need to confess one’s feelings to someone special. It’s just the teenage longing for a victory in an otherwise frustrating week, and man did I want Ian to have that win.

The cast of characters was amazing, each with their own distinct personality. So much so, that I could always tell who was speaking without needing a dialogue tag because each voice was so unique. The Ian-Eric dynamic was incredible and very believable because this is a book where teenagers feel like actual teenagers!

I was also quite impressed by the world-building aspect of the story. Usually, in horror, I take everything at face value and focus more on the impact of the horror elements. But I found myself genuinely interested in the mechanics of Leif’s world and how everything that led to the current situation operates within the rules they established. So the SFF nerd in me was pleasantly surprised.

One last thing I want to mention is the representation. I usually don’t focus on it in my reviews because I believe that the world and its people are diverse, and it shouldn’t be something that stands out in fiction anymore. But I must commend Leif for going the extra mile here. I genuinely felt like I walked away from this book having learned something new about life experiences different from my own, simply by watching the characters interact with the world and each other.

Take All of Us stole my heart from the start. It’s a story that is surprisingly deep, and its themes have stayed with me long after I turned the last page. As gory as it can get, it’s also quite humorous at times. But for me, Take All of Us shines brightest when it gets serious, and the themes start to take center stage. There were a couple of scenes that brought me to tears—a certain scene involving a letter comes to mind. This is an incredible debut by Natalie Leif. It’s a story I am sure to revisit multiple times in the future, and for that, it deserves five glowing stars.

A cute, grim, kind of punk, kind of goth, kind of video-gamey YA coming of age novel about a gay boy and his mis-matched pack of left-behinders in a world where zombie parasites turn your blood into combustible oil...

Take All of Us drew me in for many reasons. Good ones. Zombies. Gays. Pitching itself as an "unbury your gays" story. There was no way I could resist.

The book immediately sets up our core couple, Ian and Eric, a pair of best friends doing their best to hang out like everything is normal despite Eric's deadbeat dad and Ian's severe epilepsy and, oh yeah, the fact that zombies exist in their town and everybody is doing their best to pretend it's normal. A parasite of some kind has infected the water supply, and if you die with it in your system, you return, your eyes entirely black, your body slowly breaking down and rotting as your blood turns into flammable black oil...

Zombies retain their awareness and personality at first, but after a few days they descend into twitchy, dazed, husks of their former selves, locked in a fugue state doing repetitive and familiar tasks until their either rot and die, or are put down by others out of mercy.

Our story follows Ian, Eric, and a team of badass survivors named Monica, Angel, and Zoey, each of whom feels fleshed out and fully realized, each with their own issues, trauma, and personal handicaps, be they physical, mental, or both.

The early half of the book really felt like walking around reading apocalypse logs in a video game: Ian, Monica, and Angel investigating the town and searching for clues as to what had caused the evacuation, their fraught encounters with Eric and Zoey, and the few clues and pieces of information they're able to piece together, mostly by a mix of breadcrumbs and guesswork, is really interesting. The atmosphere was impeccable.

Easily the most fascinating part of the book was the parasite itself, the hints and glimpses at what was behind it, the lure and pull it had over the undead, the way it made their eyes go black. It was giving Resident Evil: Village vibes with the big mold colony thing.

Ian's descent into confusion and terror at a certain point was absolutely well-realized and left me impressed with how wrought it all was and how invested I was. It also sort of reminded me of some of the later sequences in the first Life Is Strange game. Really fantastic stuff.

I was hanging on by the edge of my seat as the book played out and Ian's fate hung in the balance. The ski-lodge sequence near the end genuinely reminded me of something akin to The Quarry or Until Dawn.

I would genuinely love a sequel to this. Although it works well as a standalone, I could see a path forward for this to turn into a duology or even a trilogy, if the author was so inclined. At the very least I would love a novella or short story from Eric, Zoey, or Angel's povs about what the three of them saw on the mountain, because I am burning with curiosity, yet a part of me likes that it was kept relatively vague, so my mind can fill in the horrific blanks.

All in all, Take All of Us is an interesting, oddly wholesome, grotesque, coming of age tale about a gay teen zombie boy and his support crew, a unique take on zombies, a love letter to disabled people, and a great little mystery with some neat surprises to unfold along the way.

I want a sequel and a Netflix film adaptation please! Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc/review copy.

3,5☆
I will start by saying that although I did enjoy the book, I found way too many things that could have been better. In cases like this, the grading is a nuisance. I would rate it 3☆ because of said mistakes, but I did enjoy it a lot, which is why I will grade it at 4☆ in here.

I have recently rediscovered my love for post-apocalyptical books, and as part of the LGBTQ+, I knew that I had to read this book.

It starts off a bit weak, we are suddenly thrown in a world in which there is some kind of disease, but we are left clueless. Not gonna lie, it was pretty hard to understand what was going on even when things started to be explained.
I feel that the explanation of everything was way too complicated for the tone that it was set in.
Still, the writing was pretty compelling, and, apart from the "worldbuilding," it was easy to follow.
One of the things I loved the most was the depiction and representation of chronical illnesses.
The feelings, the effects, and how people view them are really well developed.
I did like the characters, but at the end of the day, I feel they are very plain, in the sense that they don't evolve in the slightest. The same happens with the found family and the pseudo romance we can find between its pages.

Still, even when I feel a lot of things could have been better explained and developed, it is a really enjoyable book.

One moment, Ian tries to confess his love for his best friend, Eric. The next, he's abandoned. The town has undergone an emergency evacuation and he has been left behind, along with two other disabled teens, not knowing what happened.
And to make matters worse, he's dead.

I love the story and the themes. The small-scale apocalypse. The dead walking among the living. The government doing the bare minimum about it. The feeling of being a burden and being left behind because of it. Becoming what you tried your best to avoid.

I think the representation has been done wonderfully. It all felt like real people that fit in the story and not like stereotypes. My biggest critique is that it's done a bit too subtly. For example, Ian's gay realisation is mostly glossed over. Although I like that it's not overdone, I do wish it was a bit more.

Thank you NetGalley and Holiday House for giving me access to this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I am a queer west virginian so of course i had to read this book and love it. When I was a teenager, I lived through what was locally called the ‘waterpocalypse’, a major chemical spill of coal cleaning chemical that caused most of centeral wv to have no access to safe water for nearly a month. Reading this horror novel, even though not directly inspired by that spill, made me feel like I was connected to this story and the what ifs of my real life experience. I loved this twist that feels so inspired by the real life issues of pollution in appalachia.
I loved the emotion, character development, found familt and adventure in this book. It made such a fun read that left me thinking and craving more of this world.
I also love the representation across the board in this book, disability, queer, and poc representation. I also really loved how the book presented autism representation and how it presented in the story. It felt the most real from all the identities it tried to tackle
I do wish the book could have dug a little deeper on the intersectionality of these identites and living in appalachia. It glossed over both the homophobia and tight knit communities that exists in small town america. I also wish it faced the issues of finding specialized health care in small towns, I was surprised the book had a big hospital when it took place in what was meant to be a very small town.

Leif’s premise was promising, but ultimately I couldn’t stick with it and decided to DNF this at around 20%.

It starts off fairly weak, The first chapter sort of jumps into the world without explanation, which would be totally fine but with the entire ‘everyone can still interact/see with the dead’ just doesn’t work with a ‘nod to a couple who just know, been their done that.’ And while the focus of Ian being in love with Eric was interesting, there’s no weight to it, I couldn’t really engage or believe in this love being the catalyst to the story. I’m absolutely sure that this works well for other readers, and ultimately I know this could be a great novel. I can see the build up is there, the premise is there, I think I just had an issue with the technical writing aspect (such as paragraphs starting out with one idea, jumping to the next, then back again)

Could be a fantastic read, ultimately just not a fantastic read for me.

Epilepsy and seizure rep/depiction was done wonderfully, and I really loved the romance-the angst and longing was just SO well done.

So apparently I need to get back into the apocalypse genre because I forgot how enjoyable it can be, especially when paired with mild horror...

Take All of Us is a story about an apocalypse and what it means to take up space as a person. While I think the "horror" aspects were more "gore" than anything, I did really enjoy the world and the messages the story shared.
We follow Ian, an epileptic teen who just happens to hit his head and die at the beginning of this apocalypse, transforming him into what is basically a zombie-in-progress. He teams up with the handful of others left behind in the evacuation as they try to save their town - and Ian - from turning completely into the undead. There was a lot of build-up to an ending that might be considered by some to be unsatisfying or abrupt, but because it wraps up most of the loose ends, I was willing to accept it. (However, I do think it could be more in-depth because there are some moral issues that we just gloss over and accept without considering the consequences).
I really liked the found family vibes that developed throughout the story. Ian's personality reminded me a lot of some of my favorite characters, although I can't pinpoint exactly who. Angel was a bit annoying at times, but I didn't mind her or Monica and their developing friendship. Zoey didn't get much development, so I can't say much about her. However, I didn't trust Eric for, like, the whole story, and I see everyone else saying he's amazing, but I still got bad vibes from him that I struggled to ignore as the story progressed.
If you're looking for a YA sci-fi with apocalypse and found family elements with bits of romance, horror, and action, look no further than Take All of US.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the free e-ARC!

4/5

At its core, Take All of Us is a story of disability liberation: of allowing yourself to be a burden, to take up space, to make selfish decisions, and to choose—again and again and again—a different life over an ended one.

The story starts with insecure, people-pleaser Ian, who also has Epilepsy. He has a seizure right before telling his best friend that he loves him, dies, and then wakes up in a rotting body with his best friend, —and everyone else in town—nowhere to be found. He also hates himself. Not in the obvious way many characters do, but in the way where he offhandedly, subtly talks about himself as if he is not boy but burden; in the way that is most easily recognised by fellow disabled people, who know better than most what it feels like to put upon someone the devastation of knowing someone who is dying.

But then—and this is my favourite part—he meets Monica, a Black girl with chronic pain and a cane, who feels just as burdensome as Ian, and Angel, a fiercely blunt autistic girl with zero fucks to give and even less patience when it comes to Ian and Monica's hesitance to take up space in this world. She convinces them to take up that space, because when else is a better time to let yourself be big and bold than when your small country town has been abandoned?

Ian rots, but he also lets himself love and be loved by his new friends as they search the town for survival necessities and the people dearest to them. I don't want to spoil too much in the romantic context, as the details there develop far after the early story which is detailed in the blurb, but I must say it was charmingly complex, and added an additional layer to the disability liberation lens of the overall narrative.

This is the first story that I've personally seen that has handled apocalypses and their consequences from an authentic and empowering disability perspective. Not everyone will agree, nor will everyone feel represented by it—but I do. I do, and so will many others. It was heartwarming to read a story about a gay disabled boy living in a decaying body and doing fucked up things, and yet loving himself and being loved by those around him more than ever.

Leif's Debut, Take All of Us, goes to show not only the importance of embracing your disability, of reasserting power over your life, of making autonomous decisions regarding how you want to live that life, but also the value that is found in these stories—whether they are melancholic contemporary explorations or visceral depictions of blood, guts, and love. (The latter is my personal favourite, and I believe Leif did an exquisite job.)

Take All of Us had my heart in a stranglehold. Tears were shed.

The kids are not alright...and that's okay. There's fantastic disability, neurodiversity, and queer rep. I love that these characteristics are very intentional and central to the story. Leif centers each character's identity and loudly denounces inspiration p*rn.

There is no shortage of gross-out body horror and cosmic horror between the heartwarming moments. I found myself pacing just to release some of the tension Leif builds so well. I highly recommend this book for both YA and adult readers, especially fans of queer horror.

Thank you so much to Leif, Holiday House, and NetGalley for the chance to check this ARC out for free. I'm leaving this review of my own accord.

I feel like I shouldn't give any comments on this because I really just think this book wasn't for me, I wasn't the audience. So take everything I say lightly. This book was full of anger, sadness, and hope. Hope for as much as there were anger and sadness. It was a beautiful book, if we're being objectively honest. I just felt disconnected. It was probably because these characters want to live so badly in a situation where they don't have to and I always said that if there was an event like that, I wouldn't last a day alive. But I get it, even if only to a limited extent. When you live your whole life trying to please other people, why SHOULDN'T you take space especially in a time and place where you don"t know where your death is guaranteed? It was a nice message all in all even if I couldn't relate.

I enjoyed Take All of Us.
It was written really well and a quick read at around 250 pages though it did have some slower moments.
I loved most of the characters and they were definitely the best part of the book!

Some scenes definitely had me tearing up. I also really loved all the queer and disabled representation in the book and it made me so happy!
All in all it was a great and unique read that I would definitely recommend it especially if you are for a fun YA horror book!

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a review.

I didn't really like the book. About 50 pages in the biggest goal the main character had was reached. Another 50 pages another big goal was reached and then the story just lay flat. And I didn't feel like there was any motivation to let the story continue. It felt very unmotivated and I didn't like it. Only the last 50 pages were filled with some type of motivation and goals for the characters, and still reaching that goal was very vague and it didn't really make sense.

Thank you Holiday House and Netgalley for this eARC, these opinions are my own. An exciting read! Ian realized that he was in love with his best friend Eric right before he died. The thing is in their small town not everyone who dies, dies for good. They’re not your typical zombies though, they retain who they are and it’s slow starts to slip away from them, they also aren’t after humans. At a run down mall Ian has a seizure and drowns in a fountain. When comes back to awareness he’s alone. The towns been evacuated, including Eric. He meets Angel and she explains they left people behind who weren’t seen as fit. Determined to find Eric and tell him how he feels before he loses himself, Ian sets out, with to friends. But is there more going on than meets the eye? Can he find Eric before it’s too late? And if he does, will Eric return his feelings? A new and interesting take on the undead that added to the thrill of the story! I felt for Ian, but at first I wasn’t sure how I felt about Eric, wasn’t sure where things were going with his character! Interesting concepts and wonderful growth for all the characters! A fast paced read that will have you consuming it!

A really unique read that kept me flip flopping on how things would end. I really enjoyed my time with this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

This one was...wow. I'm not really even sure how to talk about this one. It was good, in a way that's difficult to comprehend. This is a really fascinating take on zombie fiction, used in a way to tell a story about what it means to take up space, be selfish, and live for yourself in a world that wants to leave you behind, especially in the context of chronic illness and neurodivergency. It's an allegory, but it's also very real because the characters actually have disabilities, the zombie thing is just an extra layer of metaphor over a very real story.

And it's good. It's really good. I cried a fair bit while reading because it hit really emotionally intense chords. And the ending built up very slowly and steadily to something that was eerie, surreal, and yet very emotionally resonant.

I think the only thing that pulled it down from a 5 star for me was that I found myself often a bit confused about certain plot points. <spoiler> Like, for example, how did Angel already know that Monica's mom was dead? How did any of them, actually, figure out that she was dead, and hadn't just evacuated from the fire? </spoiler> There were a fair few instances where characters would say something that contradicted something from a few pages ago, or know something that I feel like they had no reason of knowing. And while the romance seems to be a big part of the marketing, I felt like it was pretty muted in comparison to the rest of the story lines going on here, so that was just a little bit disappointing.

That aside, this is really like. Again, it's hard for me to describe exactly what I think about it because it's so surreal in probably the best way possible. I'm not a big horror person and I don't like gore, but I was able to get through the bits of gunk to deeply enjoy my time in this world.

Unbury-your-gays was too effective a catchphrase, huh.

The book itself is primarily about the feelings and experience of disabled people, as our main character has epilepsy and one of the main sidekicks has chronic pain and walks with a cane. The author uses vivid images and feelings to explain this, so I can recommend it to anyone who is interested and wants to see more. The other thing that got me was the tragedy of the romance. My favourite cliché in the world is lovers-to-enemies, and there's an endless amount of angst and pining here, so I got plenty of that in the first half of the book. The body horror part, the description of wounds, blood, and oils was spot on, but the abnormality of the world at the end kind of left me puzzled and lost some hype for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher Holiday House for providing me with an ARC!

4.5 stars

Take All of Us is a story about a group of disabled teens left behind in a deserted town, where contaminated water makes people die but not all-the-way-die.
I love zombies so I was really happy to get my hands on this book. It's classified as a horror story but I wasn't really scary, rather unsettling at times. The concept of zombies is really interesting - they are not dangerous, mindless creatures but people who cling to life with all they have. For a short period of time, they retain consciousness and their memories, even though their bodies begin to rot away. It would be perfect if there was one more chapter, a prologue that tells us about the incident that caused the contamination and the daily lives of Kittakoop's citizens.

It was interesting to see how families treated their deceased loved ones. Some of them still cared enough to treat the dead as if they weren't really dead, letting them spend their last moments how they wanted, while the less fortunate ones were abandoned or mercy-killed.

The latter is what Eric wanted to do for Ian. I wish there had been an additional chapter that would have given us a glimpse into their daily lives and allowed us to learn more about their relationship / dynamic. For the most part of the book, we only know Ian's side of the story.
I cannot say more because of spoilers, but their relationship turns out to be very sweet.

"You're worth it to us."

The found family of Monica, Angel and Ian was the best part of the story for me. Together they cope with all challenges that are being thrown their way and although it would be easier for Angel and Monica to abandon Ian, they decide to help him with his last wish.
Now, let me tell you - Ian is a sweetheart and must be protected AT ALL COSTS!
I cared a little less about Zoey and Eric, but they grew on me as the story progressed.

I was left with some questions and the book takes a while to get going (I started getting invested in the story around the 40% mark) but it's definitely worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Holiday House for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Five years after a parasite poisons his hometown's water, Ian, afflicted with chronic migraines, relies on his friend Eric to mercy-kill infected locals. When a government evacuation is triggered, Ian is injured, left behind by Eric. Determined to confront him before succumbing to the parasite, Ian teams up with his childhood rival Monica and jaded prepper Angel. Unbeknownst to them, Eric is also searching for Ian, intending to mercy-kill him.

What sets this YA romance apart is its refreshing take on love admist chaos. Ian and Eric's relationship is heartwarming, and is a sweet reminder of why I enjoy YA romance. Plus, the disability representation adds depth to the characters, proving that survival knows no bounds. The representation was well done, feeling like a cohesive part of the character rather than something tacked on or, on the other side of that spectrum, the character's entire personality.

Leif's world-building is captivating and although it was a slow start I did genuinely enjoy this read. While the pacing might feel a bit off and the dialogue leans towards the middle grade side despite heavy swearing, the book still holds up well.

Overall, "Take All of Us" delivers a fun and creepy YA adventure where the LGBTQ+ characters find happiness and survival. So, if you're in the mood for a zombie-filled journey with a side of wholesome, this book is a must-read!

'Take all of us' by Natalie Leif was recommended to me as a YA book coming out on June 2024. Let me preface this review pointing out that with the language, proportion of telling vs showing, and limited nuance, it feels more Teenage than Young Adult, but it is a fun and enjoyable story nevertheless. My guess is that the classification was influenced by the amount of violence and guts, but those are to be expected in any zombie story, aren't they?

This story features a group of disabled teenagers going on an adventure while leaning on each other in their little found family. The focus is always on their feelings and experiences, and the book does a beautiful work on using its zombies to convey the more extreme cases that their human characters don't get to address. Even when the perspective of caretakers is included, they are more on the side of parentified or glass children, which are also in need of representation and support.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt, since I have no horse in this race, but I highly recommend this book as a breath of fresh air in subjects (disabilities, chronic illnesses, end-of-life issues) still filtered in the majority of mainstream media through the lense of outsiders and how they get inconvenienced.