Everybody Says It's Everything is the story of Drita and Pete who are adopted Albanians. We travel their stories through multiple points of view and various time frames. I often prefer a more linear narrative so that may have impacted my enjoyment of this story. All in all it was a good read for me.
4 stars
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an advacne copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion. Everybody Says It's Everything is available now.

Told through alternating timeframes and perspectives, Everybody Says It's Everything tells the story of Petrit and Drita, adopted Albanian twins, who are struggling in their adulthood. I enjoyed Drita's chapters, which were primarily set in the present day, and also enjoyed the flashbacks from their mother Jackie, telling the story of how she came to adopt them.

I will admit to knowing nothing about Albanian immigrants or the war in Kosovo, so that was quite interesting to me, but I feel that while Drita and Pete learned a lot about their own family, the backdrop of the immigration and the war were left too vague. I also just found Pete incredibly irritating, and I'm not sure that the explanation given for the twins' differences really bears out. Pete never really feels like a real character, and I don't really have any idea what he wants.

For me, a highlight for the book are the chapters shown from Pete's girlfriend, Shanda's perspective. She is humanized and you really understand why she makes the descent into addiction, and why she makes the choices she does. If anything, it served to further highlight how Pete really just floated around, impacting the lives of the women around him, but didn't really have a distinct voice despite half of the book being told from his point of view.

3.5 stars, but I rounded up because I don’t want to add any more negativity to the universe right now.

I love to read a story that shines a light on a part of the world I know nothing about, in this case, the war in Kosovo, albeit told through an Albanian-American perspective. This is a story that delves into some very heavy issues, so be warned. The novel is told from multiple points of view, which I find compelling, but can also obscure certain truths. I also love a story with long-kept family secrets, and this one has a doozy, with deep implications for all those affected. All in all, this is a challenging and compelling book.

Peter and Drita are twins who were adopted and grew up as a typical American kids near the end of the 20th century. Growing up with their disabled adoptive mother, the twins were inseparable with little connection to their Albanian heritage. They were total opposites: Pete the bad boy and Drita the good girl. As they neared adulthood, their paths diverged and Drita lost touch with her brother for 3 years… until his girlfriend comes to Drita seeking help caring for their young son.

Hoping this is the chance to reconnect with her brother, Drita agrees to help. As her search for Pete begins, she finds him mixed up in the war in Kosovo and learns the shocking truth about their adoption.

This novel had a great premise and I was really looking forward to it but it just kind of meandered and the characters were just not easy to connect with. I kept hoping it would get better with themes of family, love, belonging and heavier ones such as disability, infertility, addiction and hardship, but it never fully materialized.

Thank you to @netgalley @atrandombooks @randomhouse for a #gifted early digital copy of this novel

After having loved the author's debut novel, Brass, I was thrilled to pick up her latest release and it definitely did not disappoint! A truly beautifully-written story of complicated family and I felt like the story and characters were so relatable. I don't think it's getting nearly the attention it deserves! Highly recommend!

2.5 stars, rounded upwards.

Xhenet (pronounced similar to “Jeanette”) Aliu is the author of Brass, the award-winning debut novel that was one of my favorites of 2018. When I saw that she had a new book, Everybody Says It’s Everything, I was so excited that I bounced up and down in my desk chair. My thanks go to Random House and NetGalley for the invitation to read and review; sadly, I found this book disappointing. The sophomore slump is real, friends.

Our story centers—to the extent that it has a center—on adopted twins, Drita and Pete, who’ve been leading quintessential American lives. Drita
was a star student, and is in the midst of graduate studies when she is called home to care for her mother; Pete—actually Petrit—has been in various sorts of trouble, and now his girlfriend and son have landed with Drita looking for help, since they aren’t getting any from Pete. The story takes us through their native Albanian roots and heritage, through the war in Kosovo, and through Pete’s discouragement, hardship, and addiction.

I have a hard time connecting with any of these characters. The dialogue drags, and the poignant qualities that I found in Brass are nowhere to be found. Both are sad stories, but the protagonist in Brass had my whole heart and my full attention, whereas these characters left me feeling as if I was eavesdropping on one more group of depressed, underserved people, but also edging towards the door. I was just straight up bored, a word I rarely use in reviews. I continued all the way through because I was sure that it would turn brilliant any minute; it never did.

I look forward to seeing what this author writes next, because she has proven that she has the ability to connect with readers in general and me in particular, but I can’t recommend this book to you.

This book . . . . while grateful for the ARC, I'm sorry to say it wasn't for me. I tried so many times to make it work for me, but it just didn't. I didn't feel the characters came to life for me and I could never maintain an interest in their lives. It's a shame, because the Balkan war and its aftermath is fascinating to me, and generally the fiction that comes from that era is dark, but holds my interest.

𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒏, 𝑫𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒂 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝑷𝒆𝒕𝒆 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔.

The novel begins with a sweet memory Drita carries about her troubled twin brother Pete, a reminder of the love they once shared, before his life became a disaster. It was Christmas seventeen years ago when he gave her a gift she had been yearning for and never expected to receive, but the wildness within Pete, even then, was evident. She has always felt different from Pete, even in their close times, being far steadier, straightlaced. His cool attitude is something she couldn’t fake if she tried. Now, dreading answering the ringing telephone, sure it can only be news that Pete, her “junkie” brother has overdosed on drugs or been killed by his dealer, she braces herself to take charge. She knows her disabled, widowed, adoptive mother shouldn’t have to deal with this, not with her failing health. Instead, Jackie informs her that Nadia is dead. Nadia, Pete’s girlfriend Shanda’s mother, also his son Dakota’s grandmother. Drita is perplexed that Jackie thinks it should matter to them, that she claims Nadia as family is loose at best. As a VNA nurse, Drita volunteers to pick up the medical detritus that remain from Nadia’s apartment, but she is shocked when she comes face to face with her nephew, who doesn’t even know her, surrounded by trash and a weeping Shanda. Worse, she learns that Pete is nowhere to be found, in fact, he hasn’t been in contact with Shanda nor their little boy. Drita doubts her own place in life too, not quite getting as far as she had wanted to in her career. She isn’t exactly walking in the sunshine herself. Drita offers Shanda her help but ends up with far more questions than answers. How much is expected of you, in a fractured family?

Family is a complicated tree, Albanian born Drita feels grateful for everything Jackie has done for she and her brother. Their father Dom wasn’t exactly the greatest, but where would they be without Jackie’s love and care? She knows Pete cannot blame Jackie for his failure, and that the success Drita has had isn’t luck but hard work, staying on a straight path. So why is she being pulled into his mess? There are things that happened in Arizona with Dakota, Pete is ashamed, feels worthless as a father, unfit. Drita doesn’t know as much as she thinks she does about his choice to stay away or why he has become drawn to his only friend Valon and his organization to help fight for Kosovo. This was during violent conflicts between the Albanians and Serbs, and with Pete’s Albanian roots, he is encouraged to get involved. But Drita will do anything she can to get inside and find Pete, remind him of his responsibility to his child.

The mystery surrounding the twins’ ethnic identity and birth is astounding. Jackie has hidden parts of her own painful past that must come to light and could well change how Drita and Pete define themselves. It begs the question what makes us who we are? Are we the stories we are told, our own inventions, or something in the blood? The novel has a deeper story than estranged siblings, it’s an engaging read about one’s loyalty to their country too.

Yes, read it.

Published March 18, 2025

Random House

See full review on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website: Human need for connection fuels ‘Everybody Says It’s Everything’

"Xhenet Aliu won Georgia’s most prestigious literary award, the Townsend Prize for Fiction, for her 2018 debut novel, “Brass.” Named a Best Book of the Year by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the multigenerational family drama took place among the abandoned brass factories of her native Waterbury, Connecticut.

For her second novel, “Everybody Says It’s Everything,” Aliu (whose first name is pronounced Jeanette) pulled inspiration from a different aspect of her hometown’s history: the influx of Albanians who relocated from Kosovo in the 1990s during the Balkan Wars..."

https://www.ajc.com/arts-entertainment/2025/04/human-need-for-connection-fuels-everybody-says-its-everything/

I just found this to be super confusing, not really meshed out, and confusing. The author left out so much - never fleshing out the twins' upbringings which would have added some much needed depth to their characters.

It would be an understatement to say that Pete and Drita have gone in different directions since they left the suffocating apartment they grew up in with their adoptive parents.
Drita is the good twin - college degree, close to home, respectable job, while it seems Pete has always been destined to be the one in trouble. When the story opens, he's got no job, no money, no housing, and has abandoned his girlfriend and small child. The one thing they have in common, though, is neither of them are happy with where they've ended up.
Moving back and forth between a few timelines, this is a story that shows how complicated family can be, and explores varying ideas of the ways it can look.
It was surprisingly nice that everything didn't wrap up as one might expect, but rather kind of messy and incomplete, the way things do.
Thanks to #netgalley and #randomhouse for this #arc of #everybodysaysitseverything by #xhenetaliu in exchange for an honest review.

Xhenet Aliu’s Waterbury is a blue-collar working-class environment of diverse ethnic integrities and reluctant and inevitable inter-ethnic relationships. In the past, those relationships would have been joined through factory interaction. With the factories gone, lives are claustrophobic and pinched. The struggle is to find meaning. In her first novel, Brass, Aliu’s Albanian characters, Waterbury Albanian-Americans romantically engage with Lithuanians. In her second novel. Everybody Says it’s Everything, sexuality is less of a matter of romance and more of a matter of procreation, of family formation.

Drita, Albanian American, a college graduate, working in the medical field and living with her Black lover in Manhattan, when her relationship falls apart, moves back to Waterbury. In Brass, Blacks are the invisible ethnic group (read Isabel Wilkerson’s suggestion that Black citizens of the United States should be perceived as an ethnic group instead of a racial group), hidden in neighborhoods on a hill shrouded by dense tree life. Back in her hometown, her search for a new companion happens in the 1990s, before social media, her nightly sessions at her computer are in chat rooms.

Her back story, what she knows of it. She and her twin brother, Pete, were adopted by an Italian couple after she and her brother were orphaned after their parents died in Albania. The twins’ adopted mother as a young woman gave in to the crude sexual advances of the young man who would become her husband, not that she cared for him, he was a means to an end, marriage and motherhood–the young man who she opened herself to sexually could have been any ethnically acceptable Waterbury Italian male, her belief, they’re all the same.

Her Albanian son, Pete, progresses socially by getting a young woman, neither Albanian nor Italian, pregnant, their life choices no better than the generation of their parents, and without factory jobs to look forward to and street drugs everywhere, bleaker. Pete makes a decision that changes his life.

Back at the computer, Drita’s search for romance, draws her unexpectedly deep into the current affairs of Albania and the US Albanian community. The twins are joined in their search for identity, what it means to be an ethnic American.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for a Readers Copy.

I really enjoyed reading Everybody Says it's Everything. (And the title comes into play towards the end and is meaningful.)

It centers around 2 twins in their early 30s - Drita and Pete, who were adopted by an Italian-American family in the 1970s from Albania. We learn more about the events leading up to the adoption, and their current state. Pete has always struggled, and has problems with substance abuse, crime, and irresponsibility. His partner Shanda, a drug user herself, and their child Dakota, suffer. Drita has been more of an overachiever, moving away from their small town in Connecticut for college and grad school, and then returning to support their mother. Pete has disappeared, and as Shanda and Dakota re-enter her life, Drita vows to discover Pete. This is in the early days of the Internet, which makes things challenging.

I was pleasantly surprised at some of the twists and turns the story took in all timelines. I really enjoyed the characters, and wish the book had kept going at the end.

This is the story of a VERY disfunctional family. It's set mostly in the late 1990s, but there are flashblacks from all of the four main family members - a wheelchair-bound widow; her adopted twin children in their twenties; and the male twin's wife. I thought the writing was good and the story was interesting but this book was just way to "gritty" for me. The language, the trauma, and the overall sad tone just made me bummed out. There were some glimmers of hope at the end, which was nice.

What duty do we have to our families? How does that change when you are cut off from your family of origin or willing cut them off?

Everyone Says It’s Everything is a family saga told from multiple perspectives across decades that coalesces around the genocide of Albanian people in the late 1990s. Pete and Drita are adopted twins in their mid 20s who respond to familial crises in vastly different ways but both find themselves called to their roots. In flashbacks, we learn about their Italian American mother, Jackie, and the unexpected love and loss that led her to adopt them and raise the twins in New York. The interwoven side story of Shanda, Pete’s troubled girlfriend, introduces the next generation of their family as the mother of Pete’s son, Drita’s nephew and Jackie’s grandson.

At one point, Drita sees her family’s story as “three generations of people who shared nothing except for feeling sorrow in tandem,” but there’s a hopeful message that shines through at the end about holding space for different definitions of family and duty. I enjoyed reading this book, especially the blast from the past AOL email exchanges.

I received a digital advance reader’s copy from Random House via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Adopted twins Drita and Petrit (Pete) were raised in New England and have no connection with their Albanian background. Though close as children, their paths diverged during school when Drita was motivated to use her education to earn a better life and Pete started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Now as adults, Drita has moved back to her hometown to care for her mom when Pete’s girlfriend and son show up asking for help. Pete has gone missing, and Drita intends to find him and demand he come home and provide for his family. But what she ends up discovering about their past changes everything.

The characters were well-written and engaging, and I liked reading about the web of complex relationships in the story. But the way the book was marketed felt a bit misleading. I read this book because I have an interest in the war in Kosovo, and despite the cover summary, this book has very little to do with the war or Eastern Europe. It felt like the author wasn’t quite sure what story she wanted to tell, and the big reveals made me feel confused about author choices rather than providing clarification. Still, I enjoyed the story as a look at a brother-sister dynamic.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

An insufferable book about insufferable people. As much as I can appreciate an author writing a novel about broken people, this was not done well. Whether the narrator is Drita, her brother Petrit (Pete), their mother Jackie, or Pete's girlfriend Shanda it's all the same - an excruciatingly detailed, overly complicated stream of consciousness leading to cycle of screw-ups. It started off with an interesting enough premise of Drita trying to locate her brother Pete and there is an undertone of Albania's fighting for independence against Serbs and recruiting American Albanians for the "fight" but ultimately the book goes no where.

This was a lot for Xhenet Aliu to tackle in her sophomore novel, and I appreciated the breadth of what she brought to this book, though it may have caused it to suffer a bit of depth in places I would have preferred more.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

This started out strong for me but slowly fizzled out as it went on.

Pete and Drita were both interesting characters- a set of adopted twins tho both vastly different. I thought the dynamnic of their adoptive mother Jackie was also interesting. She was a paralegic who was unable to have children naturally due to an accident that happened when she was a newlywed.

The novel was described as them trying to find their Albanian roots and in some ways it was but I felt like this idea was started and never finished. I felt like a lot of ideas were like this in this book. I was actually very interested in Jackie's story and her friendship with Antonella. I felt like we got a taste of where their story was going but it was never actually completed.

I felt the ending was lackluster and it just ended. So many things left open to wonder about with no real direction.

Three starts because I did like the first half but mostly did not like how it played out.

I enjoyed this book! It was filled with all the layers and complicated connections that make up a family. The ending made me want a bit more - I want to know what happens with Drita, Pete, And Shanda!