I have always adored Neal Shusterman’s novels. They’re some of the only storylines that have stuck with me past my adolescence.

I’m not sure if it’s because I am an almost-30 adult now, but I am struggling to finish this book. It is a novel concept — a pandemic that has an upside — and I am so intrigued to finish it, but I am getting distracted by the shifting storylines. You meet multiple characters throughout the novel, and ultimately all of their stories overlap. However, it can take a couple of chapters to see the connection between certain new personalities, and quite a few of them are unsavory. Then, there are also conflicting agendas. At least 4 characters are plotting against each other’s interests.

So although I love this book, I keep taking breaks to cleanse my palette before hoping back in. Because of that, I am running out of time to complete it before the ARC deadline. I also can’t renew the novel, so I am sharing this review now for NetGalley with my initial thoughts. My final Goodreads review will come later, after I am able to read the entire book.

Shusterman has done another terrifying book. This one is a slow but steady slide into the darkness that is human beings. Even human beings who have been infected by a virus that makes them incapable of not being happy and helpful. I don't think this is the my favorite of his, but it certainly stands to be a good option if you're looking for something to make you think and be a little scared about the state of the world.

3.5. The concept of this book is fascinating. We’re following stories about 4 main characters. It took me awhile to get into their stories i must admit. I did enjoy the breaks in between the stories to show us how other people around the world were coping with Crown Royale. I actually enjoyed those stories more. I almost gave it a 4 Star or higher but it was hard getting and following along with all of the POV’s. Also the main characters were so blah to me. I can’t put my finger on it but they were hard to connect with.

I loved how the author showed how different people reacted to this virus. Very reminiscent of 2020 COVID. Which was mentioned a lot and did give me a bit of ptsd.

I received a free eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review (I also ended up with a physical ARC from our book vendor!). Neal Shusterman is hit or miss for me, but I really loved the Scythe and Unwind series, and this felt like it was in a similar vein. I confess to stopping and starting a lot - I picked it up when we got the physical ARC, but reading on the desk is a challenge (it’s hard to concentrate when you’re getting up every 5 minutes to help kids find the Pokemon books). I’ve been in kind of a rut lately, so although this didn’t super hold my interest, I kept coming back to it in the absence of anything else exciting.

Anyway! We’re at least a few years post-Covid, and there’s a new pandemic. But this one has an unusual side effect - if you recover from Crown Royale, you’re…happy. Perfectly content, no worries in the world, all of the negative feelings are totally gone (and it also seems like the people who die from it experience happiness in their final moments). Sounds great, right? But of course everyone is freaking out about it, mainly because people who are perfectly content with their lives tend not to spend much money. Our three protagonists are Mariel, a transient teen who (mostly) lives in a car with her mother, Ron (with pretentious accent over the O), son of one of the world’s richest men, and Morgan, who was just hired to take over the fortunes of Dame Havilland, one of the OTHER richest people in the world. Dame Havilland is worried that if she gets Crown Royale, she’ll give away all of her money (it’s what the other rich folks seem to be doing), and she worked too hard for that. Morgan is pretty shrewd, so she has no moral qualms about agreeing to this setup and then immediately kicking the woman out of her own house. Mariel and Ron cross paths when Mariel and her mother spend the night in Ron’s Air B&B (it’s a whole thing - his dad rents out this crazy penthouse apartment for super cheap).

Ron eventually gets Crown Royale and he and Mariel end up taking a road trip together. He’s perfectly content, she’s…immune. No matter how much time they spend together in close quarters, Mariel cannot get sick. Morgan, meanwhile, is terrified of getting sick, so she uses some of that Hallivand fortune to open up a lab to try to devise a cure.

One of the problems I’ve always had with Shusterman’s work is that he is amazing at world building, but not so great at character development. It’s the issue with the Scythe series - the first couple of books were amazing, but eventually the world-building part kind of peters out and you have to focus on the characters, and you realize they’re all kind of flat and boring. It’s sort of the same thing here. I found Morgan fascinating - she’s a total opportunist who doesn’t seem to have any empathy. I wanted to like Mariel, but she’s as boring as Citra from Scythe. And Ron *could* have been interesting, but once he gets Crown Royale, he’s also really boring - all he wants to do is spread the disease so everyone can be as happy as he is. Perfect contentment is an extremely dull basis for a story, and when fully a third of the story is following that person…snore.

Neal Shusterman cn write a book that so unique and different than any other such as Scythe. The premise of this one is like having seasonal depression then being happy for forever. It's executed really great in some parts, but this book was longer than I would have liked and with spoiling anything would have liked some parts to not be in and some of the characters didn't make sense to me. I stayed for the plot, and I felt like he could create more in this world/setting going forward. Thank you, Neal, the publisher, and Netgalley!

Very engaging and interesting read. Very well developed and ambitious. Will be recommending to library collection and patrons.

A new virus called Crown Royal is running rampant throughout the world. This is spinning off the world just getting back to normal after the pandemic revolving around COVID. With a 96% survival rate, this virus doesn’t sound so bad except that it totally changes the way the survivors think about everything. The “recoverees” become selfless and completely content.
Two teens, Mariel and Rón, from very different backgrounds become intertwined amongst this new world. She has not contracted the disease but he is a survivor. They are falling in love and trying to navigate life with the world becoming divided.
This book is amazing! Extremely well written, descriptive character development and a “hang on the edge of your seat” plot!

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Company for this Advanced Readers Copy of All Better Now by Neal Shusterman!

3.5/5
I liked all the different perspectives this book gives you.I liked seeing all the different sides and the reasons why they were doing what they were doing.

Overall though, I don’t know how I feel about this book. I’m conflicted. I think part of me was very entertained and part of me is left wondering what the purpose of it was. I did enjoy it the whole time I was reading it. The ending was just a little lackluster. There was something missing for me. I think maybe due to some of the characters not feeling half of their emotions, I never felt any true connection to them.

I did genuinely have a good time while reading this though. I love a book that has me considering who is in the right or wrong. I would recommend this to young readers who enjoy dystopian books or someone new to dystopian. It’s a very entertaining read and I’d be open to reading a sequel.

3.5 stars rounded up. Wouldn’t it be awesome, especially in this day and age, to just feel…happy? To feel completely content, at peace, and unbothered? To not be stressed or anxious or worried or depressed, ever again, for the rest of your life? In the world of Neal Shusterman’s All Better Now, a new virus called Crown Royale is sweeping through the population, and the long-term effects are exactly that: People who survive the virus experience complete and total inner peace when they recover; they are unburdened of every negative emotion they’ve ever had. But the people in power need the masses to remain discontented for countless reasons, and they aren’t going to let society become utopian without a fight.

I found All Better Now to be so thought-provoking, a book that raises so many interesting questions and offers no easy answers. Although it’s being marketed as YA, it’s not a book that deals with (or at least not only with) issues specific to teens. It’s rooted in issues that affect everyone, regardless of age, race, culture, or creed. Shusterman presents an idea that on the surface sounds without fault – living a purely pleasurable, altruistic, contented life – until you think about the potential global implications if it were to happen worldwide. It’s such a complex concept that Shusterman explores from all sides, through All Better Now’s three core characters: a survivor of Crown Royale; someone who is immune to the virus; and someone who will go to great lengths to quelch it before it spreads. It’s a sprawling story that spans the globe, ambitious in its scope, and incredibly well-executed.

For a book so focused on feelings, though, I found that All Better Now strangely lacked emotion. I didn’t really connect with the characters in any meaningful way, which made the book overall less impactful for me. Nevertheless, it’s certainly a fascinating, original novel that still as me pondering, weeks after I finished it, what my own path would be in a Crown Royale pandemic. Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the complimentary reading opportunity.

I was given the opportunity to read an arc of All Better Now by Neal Shusterman.
Imagine a virus that creates happiness and contentment. Would you want to catch it? Would you fight to destroy it? What a genius idea! On one hand, no more need for antidepressants, anti anxiety medications, etc. The world is kinder, more forgiving. However, as The fear of missing out disappears, so does overconsumption. Society would completely change, with the downfall of big pharma, and designer retail, Capitalism would collapse.
I'm trying to be honest with myself in deciding which world i would prefer to live in. I'll be thinking about this book for weeks. I do hope it becomes a trilogy. Thanks Neal.🙂

DNF at 34%. This is a case of "it's not you, it's me" in that I don't think this is a bad book at all and I can see other people really enjoying it. For me, I just couldn't connect with the characters so that left me uninterested in reading more. I love the premise and find the concept to be fascinating. I have also enjoyed other books by this author. I'm not opposed to finishing this sometime in the future and if I do I will update this review accordingly.
I would recommend that anyone interested in the premise give it a try and see what they think!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

I loved Shusterman’s Scythe series and was immediately interested in the concept of this book where “happiness” is a contagious disease. Unfortunately, this book just wasn’t for me. I love this author but this one felt out of touch from his regular style. I enjoyed the overall plot and themes that Shusterman sets up . It was written well and I found the “dystopian” aspect really interesting in how the role of capitalism and greed impacts public health. However, what I disliked was that were way too many POVs – it made this book exhausting to get through. I get that the extra POVs provided more context about how the rest of the world is being affected by the disease, but it kept moving away from the main plot. Because of this, I was annoyed at how difficult it was to connect with the main characters since they didn’t get enough page-time during the main storyline itself. The pacing was also very slow and jumped around often with the abrupt changes in POV. I felt that this book could have easily been 100 pages shorter. If you’re looking to get into this author’s works or just dystopian titles in general, I would recommend the Scythe series.

2.5/5

As we have all experienced the COVID virus this book takes place in the not so near future when the Crown Royale virus has become a pandemic. This virus is similar to COVID but if you are infected and actually survive it changes your personality. You see things in a more positive light. Although sometimes this is a positive outcome, it causes people to do things that put themselves in harm. For example jumping into a rushing river to save a child even if they don’t know how to swim. Two people (one the son of the world’s 3rd most rich men) and woman whose mother has lost her life to the virus.) meet and take ban together to save the world.

Neal Shusterman has been one of my students' most-loved authors, with "Dry" and "Scythe" rarely seeing the library or classroom bookshelves for very long. His speculative fiction is at once believable in its potential, yet horrifying for the same reason. And "All Better Now" certainly meets those previous expectations I had for Shusterman in this genre. This novel immediately brought me back to the summer of 2020--mask mandates, scapegoating, general panic, rumors, vaccine competition--but with a markedly different pandemic. While marginally lethal, Crown Royale makes those infected incredibly happy, no matter the situation, altering not just their mindset, but often their lifestyle as well.

I enjoy the premise of the book and thought there was some good social commentary throughout. However, perhaps through the nature of the disease itself, most of the characters were one-dimensional and almost archetypal, making this 500+ page book difficult to get through. While there was room for conflicted feelings and self-destructive behavior brought on by the goal of serving the greater good, characters with the disease were mostly happy. Their main goal in life was to look on the bright side, help humanity, and sacrifice themselves for what would be best for those around them. This played out interestingly in the beginning, but by the middle of the book, I had trouble caring for one of the protagonists because it seemed they just became a conduit of the disease rather than a person. Even some of the characters who never contracted the disease, and were supposed to be seen as the human villains of the story, didn't feel complex enough besides their desire to hold power and wealth. There is "romance" in this book insofar that there are characters who meet and fall in love. While I admit that trauma and fear tend to create quicker, more immediate bonds for humans, the development of the relationship between the protagonists was too weak for me to care about it, and they quickly became annoying. I wonder if the choice to write this in 3rd person omniscient contributed to some of the difficulty I had connecting to the characters, and wondered if 3-4 1st person POVs would have been better.

Two very important lessons were reinforced for me after reading this book: 1) While we can wish to be eternally happy, it somehow means less when there is nothing to contrast it and vice versa and 2) humanity really shouldn't be messing around with nature...

Ahoy there mateys! The silly but awesome cover and the author is what led me to try this one. A virus is taking over the world and the people who catch it get utter contentment. This happiness leads to unusual circumstances. For example, the richest man in the world gives away his fortune. But there are those in power who don’t want to catch the virus and lose control. What is the proper path forward for Earth?

There are four main characters in the novel. Mariel Murdoch is a homeless teen who lives with her mother in her car. She seems to be immune to the virus. Rón Escobedo is the favored son of one of the world’s wealthiest men but is lonely and feels like he has no purpose outside of his father’s plans for him. Dame Glynis Havilland is an elderly adult who needs someone to run her empire and continue the quest for a cure to the virus. Margot Willmon-Wu is an intelligent but ruthless 19-year-old who inherits this empire. I found the teens to be caricatures. Dame Glynis was my favorite because of her transformation after catching the virus.

Once again the set-up was the better part of the novel. I stopped reading at the 45% mark. Rón ends up becoming a super spreader with no real care about how 1 in 25 people die. While the concept of people people happy from a virus was interesting at first, the consequences of this happiness causes a lot of scary problems. For example, a boat overturns and an entire group is compelled to jump into the water to save them and many die because of the current or not being able to swim. So the virus is killing more people then Covid, is taking away their autonomy, and has horrible irreversible side effects.

Full disclosure, is that I was recently diagnosed with Long Covid and my autonomy is actually being taking away due to the side effects I am experiencing. So when the happy people began to actually die and be controlled like infected zombie ants, I just couldn’t bring myself to read more of this book and actually started to have more PTSD symptoms. What started out as silly turned into a kind of offensive read for me based on my personal circumstances. No more for me. I cannot even recommend this book. Arrrr!

I really liked this book! I will definitely recommend to my teen patrons. It’s such an interesting take on free will, society and global pandemics. The characters were all so fully developed and memorable. It was fascinating to see how they all circled each other then came together in conflict at the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

TL;DR: this was a fascinating premise that left readers with a lot to think about. The characters are interesting and while the pace lagged a bit for me in the middle, the story on the whole was engaging and the concepts wild enough that I thoroughly enjoyed this read.

Three teens are stuck in a new pandemic-hit world. Their lives are all super different, but they're brought together in weird ways as a result of this virus that makes everyone happy.

That premise alone got me intrigued. I like Schusterman and I especially liked <i>Scythe</i>, so this was an auto-request for me.

The characters are all super interesting. Even the ones that seem to be bad guys are not really all that bad, and sympathetic characters always get me. I really enjoyed watching them evolve throughout the story. I also thought that their interdynamics (both between the three and with side characters) was unique and a nice play on standard tropes.

The story did lag a bit in the middle, but the pacing was mostly consistent, the story was really well structured, and while the dialogue was a bit cheesy occasionally, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It gave me a lot to think about and mull over. The ending was both brilliant and frustrating in the best way.

What would you do if you had the choice to be happy all the time? Would you willingly infect yourself with a disease that would cure your anger, depression, and every bad day? Of course, right? But what if that disease also took away your choice? Your free will, your ability to see both sides of a situation, to play devils advocate, to put you and your loved ones first?

In a dystopian world where this happiness infection spreads as quickly as COVID, Shusterman examines human nature and our desire for contentment, even if it costs us everything. Does society really want world peace, even if it’s at the expense of the economy? Would you really be happy to open your doors to anyone, including the homeless? Shusterman’s always brilliant mind forces readers to contemplate what they would do for happiness, and what they would sacrifice for society. Beyond brilliant, compelling, and mind-blowing—Shusterman NEVER misses.

Morality is all about perspective in a world that struggles to decide if a virus that perpetuates contentment is one worth contracting. Shusterman takes on questions of right and wrong, autonomy, and the very thin lines between selfish, selfless, and reckless. A fast-paced thrill ride that takes all of the fears of the COVID-pandemic and multiplies them a thousandfold. The suspense is the background of a character-study that keeps you glued to the page. An excellent YA read for fans of dystopian tales with complex characters with motivations that you can understand, even if you don’t agree with them. Readers who enjoyed Station Eleven may like this too.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. All opinions are my own.