ALL THE WATER IN THE WORLD really surprised me. I went in expecting a dystopian novel, but instead, I read a character based story that really explores how humans respond to a world that is constantly changing. It was a lot more insightful and lovely than I anticipated and I ended up feeling very close to the characters and the journey they endured.

The settings were fun- in a world destroyed with water, Nonie and her family are taking refuge places like the American Museum of Natural History. It offers such look at climate change and how humans will face this in the future. The world that Eiren Caffall created feels very real, and almost too frightening at times.

I enjoyed this one. It's an interesting world and a unique setting. I always enjoy museum based fiction and the climate change survival genre is a personal favorite.

What a heartfelt sad, but overall hopeful novel about the climate crisis. All The Water in the World is a unique story about a family and close friend who are living in NYC, the entire city has been abandoned due to huge floods and storms. Another huge storm comes and they are forced to evacuate and look for somewhere habitable. This post-apocalyptic / dystopian book felt almost in a similar vein to Severance which is one of my favorites. i'd say this was a bit more surface level writing wise, but also quicker to read. I really enjoyed the flashbacks during the book and learning Nonie's background and about her mom who we are not able to meet as readers. I'd recommend this book! Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC.

I wanted to write a review for this work for my blog, Cobleskill Commentaries; however, I have not been able to write about it comprehensively, so I am going to provide a concise review here.

Eiren Caffall's new novel, All the Water in the World, is a nail-biter of a thriller that keeps readers on the edge of their seats, a feat not easy to achieve in written form. The story revolves around Nonie (a great reference to The Poseidon Adventure), her older sister, her father, and several researchers, all survivors of a cataclysmic natural disaster that has put New York City underwater. The only places that are safe are on higher ground, which includes the roofs of buildings like the American Museum of Natural History, a place filled with cultural and natural artifacts that can hopefully be saved by whomever is left. Ultimately, the fated group has to leave the respite of the museum to find out if there is life outside of the confines of their watery prison, which leads to a perilous journey filled with significant dangers around every turn.

All the Water in the World works as a warning about climate change while also keeping the audience wondering what will happen next; Caffall's visualization of the waterworld is harrowing, frightening, and relevant; and, the relationship between the survivors provides a much-needed emotional shot to the arm as these characters traverse from one terrible situation to the next. The only issue this work : once there is major death about 3/4 of the way through, the rest of the novel loses some of its luster. With the subject matter the way that it is, readers are to expect death; however, in this case, the extraneous melodrama of the death unfortunately overshadows the real emotion we might have felt otherwise or later on, as the ending draws near.

I really wanted to like this one more than I did. It's not bad, but didn't quite make it to 4 stars. I loved the parts when they were living in New York and taking care of the museum, but their journey just didn't grab me. There is decent tension between humanity's worse traits and hope as they journey to find a place their mother told them about after having to abandon New York City after a storm breaches the storm wall protecting the city.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy of this book for review.

When I read a book like this, I wish I could wipe my memory slate clean and read it all over again, enjoying it just as much time after time. What a beautiful, well-written story of a not so distant future when the earth is returning to one big ocean. This book reminds me of "The Light Pirate", which I also loved. It happened in the groves of Florida; this book happens in the steel and concrete world of New York. The author's perception of what could happen and how different personalities evolve is almost clairvoyant.
If you tire of your little world and want a respite, crawl into this sweet novel. Faith in humanity, stamina when needed, and the hope for good is always a welcome respite.
Thanks so much to St. Martin’s Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The publishing date is January 7, 2025.

I was excited for this one based on the synopsis. I love a good dystopian novel. This was so incredibly slow and trying far too hard that I couldn't get into it though.

The premise of this book had me thinking “The Day After Tomorrow” vibes, but this book felt as though it actually was more heavily focused on the characters than the dystopian setting. We follow Nonie, her sister and parents as they travel from NYC to western Massachusetts for safety after the city’s walls flood. There’s also some flashbacks that give a bit more on how these characters got to where they are. I will say I had really high expectations for this one because it blended a lot of things that I really love - cli-fi, dystopia, a thrilling adventure and the location where I grew up - however, I don’t felt like it all came together enough for me to love it. I needed more on the political climate and how the transition from today to this new dystopia took place, and I really needed a stronger connection to the main character. Overall, I enjoyed this one, and will read this author again, but missed I needed a bit more to really love it.

I genuinely don't know how i feel about this. Loved Station Eleven but this just felt off. thanks netgalley & the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

I'm very annoyed that this was pegged as "for fans of Station Eleven." This felt simplistic and no where near that level, which made this book really hard to appreciate. Definitely a case of over hyped, under delivered.

The comparison to Station Eleven was an immediate draw for me. This book tells the story of Nonie and fellow survivors who are left in a flooded out New York City after environmental catastrophe. After a super storm hits, the survivors are forced to flee, travelling upstate and preserving the history of the collections at the New York Natural History Museum. There were definitely some good parts-when the book focused on the more dystopian elements like the story of how the city ended up a flooded mess, how it impacted Nonie's family and fellow survivors, the way different groups encountered approached survival-those were the good parts. Part of the story was slow in spots and lacking a sense of urgency that I normally sense when reading apocalyptic fiction. Worth a read but not my favorite in this genre.

The premise of this book was hard for me to get into. While the writing was well done, I couldn't connect with the characters and their plight after a world disaster. But for those who enjoy something like Day After Tomorrow, this book may be for you. It's farfetched following a climate change disaster. Many thanks to #netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was an absolute snoozefest and I feel so bad for hating it. It just made absolutely no sense to me. I liked the main character and her way of seeing the world, however if I could have also understood the world that would have been great.

I really struggled to understand how the world was so flooded that they had to use canoes and boats but some people seemed to leave in houses and also being able to read gravestones was mentioned. The descriptions of the environments confused me to no end.

Initially, and with the blurb, I thought this was going to be a story about preserving knowledge, the knowledge of the museum that they're carefully collecting especially. I thought they'd meet other people and share/gain more knowledge but the reality was that there was a big storm and then they just wandered to a new camp in a boat and that was it really.

All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall combines the big picture ideas found in many climate novels with the very personal story of living in the aftermath of catastrophe where future events take things from bad to worse.

I enjoyed the flashbacks and how they meshed with what they were trying to do in the adventure part. Some of the descriptions are wonderfully written and the perspective of a younger protagonist rather than perhaps an older and less inquisitive person made the story more interesting.

While the writing was indeed wonderful, the storyline seemed a bit uneven. Some sections lagged a bit for me while others had me fully invested. On the whole it worked for me but I would have liked it better if the peaks and valleys had been due to the tension rather than slow moments.

I think one takeaway for me was the danger of how different people will cope with major apocalyptic change. It might not simply be people having to crowd together on ever shrinking land masses but potentially the loss of any sense of community beyond those you live with. The groups we discover have found ways to survive that run the gamut, and many would prevent the reestablishment of a more unified future.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

The premise of this book was absolutely giving the day after tomorrow! I absolutely loved that movie so once I started this I quickly fell in love with it too! It is a bit on the slower side as far as pace goes but it was still great!

What an emotional ride. Told from the point of view of a young girl about survival after the glaciers melt and the world is underwater, this is happy, sad, suspenseful, and everything in between. A tale of survival and heartbreak.

Thank you, Netgalley, for this ARC in exchange for an honest review, which is as follows:

I love a good dystopian tale, and I enjoyed this one. I also love that the author was inspired by stories of Iraqi and Russian curators protecting collections from war. It's so important that we learn from history. I love the point of view and the narrator's perspective. I love that the author, and the narrator, turn cataclysm into hope. This isn't a future that's all that far from us (witness the wealthy buying out higher elevation and formerly-more-poor neighborhoods in Miami, for example), and although water destroys her world, Nonie does not let it destroy her love or respect for it. She leans in further. This is what we're going to have to do, too.

The starkness of this author's writing was sometimes a little challenging for me, however, but maybe this is personal. And I felt a bit sad that her father wasn't, at all, mentioned in the very tidy one-chapter wrap-up of the book (I realize this is a common formula these days). There was also some maybe-symbolism that I didn't really understand even after some "book club discussion question"-style contemplation. But in the end, this is a great read. In certain classrooms, this might even be a good high school reading list selection.

Readers who enjoy slow-paced books with a vague plot and multiple timelines will eat this up. The writing is excellent.

Haunting, horrifying, important.

All the Water in the World is a story of survival. Nonie, an autistic-coded teenager, lives with her family on the roof of the abandoned American Museum of Natural History because catastrophic floods have ravaged New York City, rendering it an uninhabitable and completely lawless place. Nonie grows up learning all she can from the museum as the rooftop community works to preserve and protect what they can of the museum's collections. When an especially devastating hypercane hits, Nonie and her family are forced to flee. The question is: will they make it to safety, with all that they saved from the world as it was?

What I liked: No better time for climate fiction than right now, as we watch communities all over the world struggle to recover from natural disasters that get closer and closer and closer to home. Even though this book is shelved as sci-fi and dystopia, it felt extremely realistic - scarily realistic actually - and we need more of that, because a lot of people are really comfortable pretending the climate catastrophe simply won't affect them from inside their million-dollar Manhattan homes. I also liked the emphasis on preservation, the reverence for our shared planetary histories, the call-backs to wars and disasters and lootings that have threatened those histories before. I liked the neurodivergent representation, and the harsh but necessary reminder that disability, disease, and chronic health complications are intimately tied to the climate crisis, and are coming for us all.

What didn't work for me: This book is thematically urgent, but I am already a person who is constantly stressed out about the state of the world, so I didn't need any convincing on that front. Unfortunately, this book didn't feel temporally urgent. I couldn't put my finger on why the pacing wasn't working out for me, but this was just....a little bit boring, and a little bit slow. I expected more from a book marketed as a thriller, and at the same time, the meditations on art and collections and preservation didn't feel weighty enough to offset the lack of tension. I understand that the author made a deliberate stylistic choice to make the narrator a young neurodivergent girl who is so clearly traumatized by the only life she's known, it seemed to halt the flow of the narrative moreso than it helped the tone, worldbuilding, and reflection. I see it, I understand it, it just didn't work for me. The choppy cuts to different points of Nonie's life made it hard for me to follow the story at times, and there was an emotional disconnect between her narration of the events and the chaos you assume is unfolding. For a water-logged world, the events of the novel read very neat and dry.

Lastly - and I will not let this part affect my rating, because I know it's not in the author's control - please stop comping books to Station Eleven that come nowhere near it in terms of emotional weight or prose. You're just setting the book up for failure. I know comps had to be tough for this one, but still.

Ultimately, I think this is a very timely, very important read, and I will reccomend it to friends who I know will appreciate it. I just don't think it accomplishes all that its trying to do, and I didn't have the greatest time reading it. Sometimes books like that make for good reads anyways.

Thank you NetGalley and SMP for the advanced e-copy of this book.

I was interested in reading this book because of my love of NYC. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into it. It moved too slowly. This was a DNF for me.