2 stars

I had such high hopes for this one, but it was such a struggle to get through. It is slow and the narrator has little emotion which made me not too invested in any of the characters. There were some interesting g things, just not in the way it was told. The flashbacks made everything more drawn out.

Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced copy to form opinions from.

This book was giving me Day After Tomorrow vibes and I found it to be super interesting, It was a bit of a slow burn but I really liked it in the end.

3.75 stars

This felt like The Walking Dead without zombies or The Last of Us without fungi creatures. A group of survivors try to navigate a changed world.

I loved the setting of this, particularly as a New Yorker. The characters themselves felt a bit flat at times and I didn’t always care what their fates were. It didn’t feel like the most original story ever, but I still overall had a good time reading this.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for access to this work. All opinions are my own.

Very interesting read, dystopian book. Nonie, her sister Bix, and their parents are living on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History after New York is flooded. Their parents used to work at the museum. They live with other people who also used to work there. Things are not so bad until a huge wave crashes into the museum and they lose all their food, medicine, and supplies! This story shows how lost we are without electricity and everything else we use every day, without thinking about it!

All the Water in the World” is a post-apocalyptic tale set shortly. I found the story to be well written.

Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and author Eiren Caffall for providing me with a complimentary ARC.

An interesting premise but this one was too slow for my taste and a little hard to follow due to the writing style.

I picked this up because of the comp for Station Eleven, which is one of my favorite books. While, I can understand the comparison this one just didn't work for me. The pacing was somehow very slow, while the feeling was quite anxious (fear of water...maybe I was bound to dislike this from the beginning!) While harrowing, it was also pretty non-emotional and I couldn't connect to any of the characters. Overall, it was hard to pinpoint how I was feeling about anything because of these contradictions in tone/pacing, etc.

The premise was really promising, and I do like post apocalyptic stories - but this one wasn't for me. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read a digital arc!

I'm on a roll with cli-fi thrillers this year. Scary in how close we are to a situation like this. Engaging and propulsive. A great slump buster. I really enjoyed this and flew through it.

Although I am a die hard fan of The Walking Dead, All the Water in the World appealed to me because my ideal apocalypse does not include zombies. I loved the concept and the characters, especially Nonie, Bix, and Keller. Because of the writing style, point of view, and the level of character development, I think this would be better pitched as a young adult novel.

Set in an apocalyptic future, All the Water in the World is about a group that tries to stay afloat in a world that’s flooded and constantly ravaged by storms and hurricanes.

The parts describing how things changed and the ways in which the group adapt to the new way of life stood out for me. More than anything, this book made me think about how I would survive in such a world! However, the pace was way too slow for my taste and I didn’t connect with the characters. In short, it failed to make an impact on me despite its intriguing premise.

All the Water in the World is a beautifully rendered, atmospheric debut that pulses with emotional and environmental urgency. Eiren Caffall has crafted a story that feels both intimate and epic, rooted in familial connection and the raw edge of a world reshaped by climate shifts.

The writing is immersive—poetic without being overwrought, lyrical without losing clarity. The voice of the young narrator is haunting and memorable, pulling the reader into a sensory-rich world where water is both lifeline and threat. Caffall’s background in environmental storytelling is clear, but she never lectures. Instead, the novel invites quiet reflection on what we carry, what we lose, and what it means to survive together. This is not a story of spectacle, but of texture and heart. For readers who appreciate literary fiction with speculative undertones and a deep respect for the natural world, All the Water in the World is a gem.

Interesting concept, great cover, but as an editor the writing style was so difficult to follow. Almost every paragraph technically had a run-on sentence and my brain couldn’t figure out how to decipher it all.

This book was beautiful, sad and slow. A true character study of a young girl at the end of the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC of All the Water in the World.

I can see other's enjoying this book, but unfortunately it was not the right fit for me. It didn't hold my interested and I wasn't excited about picking it back up so I had to DNF.

This is a did not finish for me. The plot summary sounded interesting when I read it, but the story itself became slow and needlessly depressing.

Dystopian fiction that is extremely depressing.

I’m usually a big fan of post apocalyptic fiction and love to read about survivors and how they create a new world order from whatever disaster has fallen. The premise of this was interesting — oceans have melted due to climate change, bad weather has caused the water to rise and drown out all the coastal cities. The synopsis said that the survivors who stayed in New York City lived on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History, AMNH, that the residents called Amen. I thought the narrative would be about living in the museum and its artifacts and treasures, hunting in Central Park, carving out a living within a really cool building. But it wasn’t. Almost immediately the hypercane flooded them out and they had to leave. Then I had to endure a very long, repetitive, drawn out “on the run” scenario with one dreadful thing happening after another. The story is told from the point of view of a 13-year-old girl named Nonie.

The book was very slow and I considered not finishing it but kept on going because I’m that person who has to know the ending. I’ll not ruin it for anyone who can’t predict what is likely. I guess the main problem with this book is that it was very depressing and not even the author’s attempt at creating sympathetic characters could make it better. So, basically this was typical end of the world as you know it stuff. And I’d definitely say that it had a lot of really boring filler. The author states that it took 11 years to write this book and it felt like about that long for me to finish it.

I was able to listen to this audio book while also following along in the e-book ARC provided by the publisher. The narrator, Eunice Wong, did an OK job voicing the characters in the book, but it wasn’t compelling enough to change my opinion about the story itself.

This is a climate fiction book. Thankfully it is not trying to demonstrate ways to change the world in real time but rather focused on a family as it navigates this new flooded environment. This takes place in the near future after the weather has converted to these hypercaines as they are described. The humans in this new climate are constantly at risk from catastrophic winds, intense lightning and copious amounts of rain. The coastal areas are all tens of feet underwater. You meet the family and learn they have been living in the American Museum of Natural History (amnh - pronounced like amen) who need to leave and try and join an upstate farming community they believe exists. It claims to be a thriller but it seems rather slow to build and the tension isn't present. It is a journey focused on the perspective of Noni one of two sisters who journey up the Hudson river with their dad and some others. They run into other communities and some obstacles to ultimately share their story. I did not connect with the characters and storyline seemed too simple.

It's been about a week since I finished All the Water in the World and it's been on my mind non-stop. I've always been drawn to post-apocolyptic stories and what they can tell us about the persistence of humanity.

After the world has flooded, Nonie and her family are surviving in a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. They work hard for their small community and to protect the museum's archives. When a superstorm occurs, they must flee AMNH onto the Hudson and encounter many staple New York sites along the way. Throughout their journey they meet other communities and witness how they have adapted throughout the years of turmoil.

This story gripped me from the start. As an art history minor, I often think about those who risked their lives to protect the knowledge, books, and artifacts we still have to this day. I found Nonie's devotion - instilled in her by her family - to protect this knowledge deeply moving.

It was also fascinating to see how quickly the different communities created rules, governing systems, and funeral rituals for themselves.

I could have read 300 more pages of this book. I wish it was longer and felt that the end was a bit rushed to my liking. However, if you like the Last of Us, Station Eleven, or any emotional post-apocalyptic story, this is a must-read.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 / 5 stars or 9 / 10

All the Water in the World is ideal for readers who enjoy immersive and emotionally deep character-driven stories that handle urgent themes of survival and humanity's resilience in a dystopian setting ravaged by climate change.

Would I consider myself one of those aforementioned readers? In a normal scenario, yes. With this book in mind, apparently not.

The focus for the themes of this novel is on familial bonds, and more than anything that drives the story. And the themes are scattered throughout a tale of climate change and museum preservation, told through the point of view of a young girl who has a deeper than natural connection with water in a world that is flooding and continues to flood.

This felt more like a travel/adventure story, because from the very start, the family is forced to leave the museum they've called home for so long and begin a journey to the only other safe place they know of they might can call home. And a lot happens on the journey, of course; they meet a myriad of different characters, dangerous things and people cross their paths, and through it all they cling to each other and the destination they have set their sights on.

This wasn't a bad novel by any means: there was a lot of depth and heart. However, this might have not been the book for me because I often felt like the story was dragging. The pace was very slow for me personally. And I would have liked to have seen more focus on the preservation side of the story, as the author was inspired by the real life stories of of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war. I feel like there was a lot more that could have been said and explored in this regard but the focus kept being drawn elsewhere.

I see this book being great for a young adult audience that is interested in the effects of climate change and natural preservation. For me, though, it was mid and not to memorable.

Special thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an advance digital review copy.

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall is a lyrical saga of survival against all odds in the not-too-distant future of a waterlogged New York City. The story is told from the perspective of young Noni, who has an uncanny ability to sense storms coming and predict their severity. The world is mostly underwater and Noni and her family have sought refuge at the American Museum of Natural History, or Amen as they refer to it due to the sound of the museum's acronym. When a hypercane strikes and finally drowns their final refuge, the group has no choice but to try to paddle upstate to see if their family farm is still in existence. What follows is a bit of a modern-day Huck Finn adventure, but with the post-apocalyptic feel of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Perfect for readers of Jessie Greengrass's The High House, as well as Stephen Markle's The Deluge, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, and Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this lovely, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, story.

All the Water in the World explores a deeply personal story within a hauntingly dystopian framework. Eiren Caffall weaves reflections on family with a broader sense of environmental collapse and societal decay, creating a quiet but unsettling tension throughout the book. The looming sense of scarcity, of health, of time, of water, adds weight to every page.

The dystopian themes are more atmospheric than plot-driven, and while that lends the book a poetic, meditative tone, it also makes it feel somewhat diffuse. There are moments of deep insight and beauty, but they’re interspersed with sections that feel repetitive or abstract, which can dull the emotional impact over time.

Still, Caffall offers a unique voice and perspective.. For readers drawn to quiet, reflective dystopias, this will be a compelling, if occasionally uneven, read.