Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for letting me listen to a ALC of All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall. I’ve rated this book 3.5 stars, but for the purposes of this review have rounded it up to 4 stars.

In a world ravaged and drowned by climate disaster, Nonie and her family must abandon the life they knew and find a new way to survive the world as it has become. They start a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH for short, pronounced like “Amen”) and live in relative harmony and safety, never letting in strangers, hunting and growing food in Central Park, and trying to preserve the massive collections of human history and science. Nonie, in particular, keeps her own records of life, the collections, and much more. When they must abandon the place they’ve come to call home, they take a boat and ride the swollen Hudson river hoping to make it to her mother’s old home in the north. As one would expect in a post-apocalyptic/climate disaster story, they encounter all types of unsavory characters who have found other ways of surviving. Readers are sure to encounter themes of grief, coming of age, community, love, the importance of history and knowledge, and question the ways in which humans choose to survive (perhaps one of the most intriguing parts of books like these).

I really really wanted this to be a 5-star read (especially since it’s compared to some of my favorite dystopian stories like “Parable of the Sower” and “Station Eleven”), but this missed the mark. I found it slow-paced, occasionally repetitive, and at times a little *too* much like the aforementioned comparison titles. That being said, if you want an atmospheric, post-climate-disaster drowned world, slow-burn read – this is a great option! I, perhaps, had too high of expectations for the contents, but that doesn’t make it not a great read for others. I really enjoyed Caffall’s writing style, tone, and Eunice Wong does an amazing job at bringing the character’s voices and experiences to life. I genuinely look forward to seeing what else she crafts in the future!

For my last read of 2024, I checked out All the Water in the World, a post apocalyptic story of a group that took refuge on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, known to them as AMEN. Many were scientists before the biosphere collapsed and left the world and society in a ruined state. I enjoyed it a bit more than I expected with great description, introspection of how the world got to this point, and the tension through the events and short chapters. This is partly an adventure story, but it’s more about how our protagonist, Nonie, feels about her world in both the past and present as we switch between the current journey and what’s happened in the past at AMEN. One thing I wish was that the present chapters would be in present tense to reduce confusion. She’s been trained to feel the water in order to keep their survival chances up, and yes, water is a very important and imposing element in this book. She also catalogues all the history in the museum for future generations. However, everything changes once the museum is no longer habitable and they have to find a new place to call home, hundreds of miles away. The adventure is perilous indeed, and with great description of the visuals, it was haunting of how the world could turn so dangerous in just a few decades. The characters were fleshed out as well with their own histories and personalities, and I have a feeling Nonie might be autistic from some things in the book, but I can’t be fully sure. I do like that she’s determined and resourceful as the story moves forward, but not unfeeling to everything going around around her. I’m happy that the chapters were mostly short to keep me engaged as some of the chapters were a bit slower paced and took me a bit to have it really sink in. There was some redundancy in some parts, but it wasn’t too bad. However I listened to the second half of the book in one go. I know those that love a more literary style will enjoy reading this book. The ending itself had an air of hope despite all that they have to go through. Eunice Wong brought the story to life with a voice that captured Nonie’s personality well. If you’re looking for an introspective story and character study, this is one not to miss.

All the Water in the World
Eiren Caffall
Narrated by Eunice Wong
Macmillan Audio

All the Water in the World is a story of hope, survival and family. Set in a time when the glaciers have melted and those still alive are trying to survive every single day. Part dystopian, part environmental/climate thriller and part science fiction, each piece is intended to bring the reader into the world where home is unknown, and water is everywhere.

Nonie, her older sister Bix, her parents and other researchers have found the Museum of Science and Natural History in NYC to be their refuge. Like the water, things are always changing and moving, and they know that it cannot be their home forever. They are without medicine, electricity and modern conveniences. They are cut off from the rest of the world but use their love for each other and knowledge of the environment and other factors to survive.

This is an emotional and reflective novel told from Nonie’s perspective about how life is, was and may be. All the elements of a good dystopian novel are included in this book - dangerous natural conditions, rogue marauders, not knowing who to trust and a tight group who remain hopeful. I keep asking myself, how close to truth and to our future could these conditions be?

(3.75 stars)
The cover art of All The Water in the World immediately grabbed my attention. It shows famous landmarks of New York City (e.g., The Empire State Building) mostly submerged in water. And when I read the publisher’s blurb, I knew I had to read it.

Set in an unknown number of years in the future (but not too far in the future, I think), the story is told by a young teen girl, Nonie. She has a special relationship with water, can feel storms coming, for example. As the story opens, she and her older sister, Bix, and their father are living on the roof of what used to be the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in Manhattan. They have a small community, living in a longhouse structure on the roof but able to go inside the former museum for shelter. They call it AMEN, sort of an abbreviation of the museum’s abbreviation. The people of Amen have tried to save important things from the museum. They recall how the people in Leningrad and France and Italy and Iraq tried to save art and other priceless items, and also the monks of the Middle Ages, who transcribed ancient texts, to preserve them for the future. They tend a garden and hunt deer in Central Park. Their former home on 10th Street, downtown, is gone, completely under water. (Miami is gone, among other coastal places.) Their mother has died of a disease that once was treatable, but medicines are extremely scarce, along with many other things we all take for granted. Then a humongous storm upends even their current “normal” lives - it’s so big, it’s called a hypercane! NYC had built flood walls, but those were now overtaken by the storm. Water rises and rises. The rest of the story is how this small family plus a friend, Keller, handle their perilous new reality. Interspersed with their adventure/journey, are lots of flashbacks and entries from Nonie’s “water log.”

While I really loved the story, I found it to be a bit slow-paced, making it seem much longer than its 304 pages/8 hours and 12 minutes of audio. It was very reflective in nature, with it being told by Nonie. The whole thing was disturbing, discombobulating, as it covers so many landscapes and places that I know so well in “the world as it was,” as Nonie calls what we think of as present day.

I mainly listened to the audiobook version of All The Water in The World. It was beautifully narrated by a new-to-me narrator, Eunice Wong.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a review copy of this book and to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to a review copy of the audiobook. All opinions are my own.

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an alc!

i’ve never been a fan of climate fiction (cli-fi), considering it’s not ever been a fictional concept and the looming threat contradicts my desire of escapism…

all the water in the world is most likely my first cli-fi novel, and i found the concept of our fmc nonie having the ability to be hyper-aware of when the next disaster would occur rather interesting.

the narrator was great as well!

I am a sucker for a found family and the small details that really make the world of the book come alive. This book had that in spades! I love the way that kids were taught and they way that they looked at their “home” - the Museum of Natural History. Nonie’s “powers” were just the slightest touch, which I thought was well done. Their journey to the new safe area was interesting and I liked the different kinds of challenges faces and people that they found along the way.
My only complaint is that the character of Keller was a little uncomfortable because he felt too tropey, but some of that was resolved by the end.
Overall this was an interesting post apocalyptic found family journey book.

This was a new and interesting take on natural disasters hitting the world and ending it as we know it.

My favorite piece was the knowledge given to us and shown through these characters. It is something we wonder about when things happen, who will remember them? Having human history honored and examined and used the way these characters did was a great addition.

I really enjoyed this story, it was heartbreaking and hopeful. It was written so beautifully with descriptions that evoked emotion and relatability in a world that seemed almost far fetched.

Stories like these always have me wondering about the before and how something happened. How did the world end and what was that time like through the eyes of those who lived it.

A dystopian novel which gives us a glimpse into the future of our planet. With global warming and the eventual melting of the glaciers, our world could very much be like the one described in this novel. A small group of survivors struggles to find a safe haven and must maintain hope and work together on their journey. I thoroughly enjoyed this well written book! The alternative storylines between the world as it is and the world as it was are told by Nonie, a young teen who has the ability to sense storms and other water-related events before they happen. While on the journey to a safe haven with her sister, father and a friend, she moves the story forward while remembering events that led up to the current crisis that forces the group to leave NYC. The story is informative, engaging and action packed and also offers good character development. All the elements of a good dystopian novel are included in this book - dangerous natural conditions, rogue marauders, not knowing who to trust and a tight group who remain hopeful plus much more! A really enjoyable read, especially for lovers of dystopian science fiction.
I listened to the audio version of this book and found the narrator to be engaging and appropriately dramatic without being over the top. Well done!

This just didn’t work for me, but I can tell that a lot of readers will really enjoy it.

My main gripes with the book include:
- It was boring and started slow, which caused me to lose interest early on. If this hadn't been a review copy, I would've DNF'd it.
- Nonie can ~feel~ water, but this ability isn’t explored.
- I wanted to know more about how the world came to be—not their life before the flood, but during it.
- I can tell I’m supposed to care about these characters, but the writing made them feel distant.
- The flashbacks were very jarring. One moment we’re in the present, and the next, I’m wondering why this person is still alive.

Some of these issues may have stemmed from listening to the audiobook. The narrator was good, but it was sometimes difficult to tell when the story shifted from past to present.

I had a failry good time listening to this book! There were some spots where I felt confused and would have to go back and relisten but otherwise enjoyed the story!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and Eiren Caffall for the ALC of this thought provoking book. The storyline, world building and conflict were solid, and the voice actor did a good job narrating.

This story gave me "Water World" prequel vibes, like this is the start of the world sinking and these people are attempting to hold on to humanity as best they can. Medical practices are crude, the government has fallen, segregation has reappeared, and tribes are formed for the purpose of survival.

The cover art for this book is perfect! As I tandem read and listened to this book I would occasionally glance at the cover art and shake my head in agreeance. The writing was descriptive enough for me to visualize every scene and that is always a win for me.

I could not put this book down, when I was able to sit and devote time to read it, I did, When I did housework and ran errands, I listened.

There were parts that sounded a lot like news reports of today. If we are not careful and pay attention to the ever changing weather patterns and the severity of them, our future could easily look like the world depicted in All The Water In The World.

I am leaving this honest review voluntarily and without coercion.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the early copy of All the Water in the World.

From the description, I expected this to lean more toward genre fiction about a family living in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC after rising water levels due to glacial melt submerge much of NYC. It’s compared to Station Eleven, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower. Having read the first two (and with the third on my TBR), I’d say this book skews more toward literary fiction. This isn’t a bad thing, of course! But it does mean the book will probably resonate with a different group of readers than the comps suggest.

At its heart, this is a reflective story about a family’s post-apocalyptic journey from their makeshift home in AMNH to a farm in the Hudson Valley. In flashbacks, we see this family and fellow (former) museum employees racing to preserve both cultural artifacts and human knowledge before they’re lost to the encroaching sea. It’s a beautiful story that serves as a bleak warning against climate apathy.


Narration notes: The writing is poetic and atmospheric, with a lyrical quality that really invites the reader to linger. Typically, I prefer to read this type of writing with my eyes rather than listening with ears, but with Eunice Wong as the narrator, you really can’t go wrong. She does a phenomenal job brining the atmospheric setting to life. If this is your kind of book, the audio is a great way to go!

Wow… just wow! I really picked this up because of the narrator and the museum connection described in the synopsis. in fact, if not for Eunice Wong, I probably would’ve passed this up because of the description tying this book to Emily St John Mandel who has never quite my cup of tea. Well, I think there’s something here for fans of Mendel’s work for those of us who don’t tend to gravitate towards her particular brand of literary sci-fi. Do not let that dissuade you from picking up All the Water in the World. Caffall has built a truly convincing and terrifying world that draws on examples of history all told through the story of a young girl and her family who are trying to preserve a museums collection in the face of catastrophe. These beautifully flushed out characters were made all the more compelling by Eunice Wong’s masterful narration. I swear she could make me feel compassion for an inanimate object, she’s just that good at bringing a story to life. Make sure you pick this up on audio!

I can’t quite pinpoint why this didn’t work for me, I just know that it didn’t. It’s a concept I had a lot of hopes for, and Nonie is fine as a protagonist, but nothing ever quite grabbed me or clicked like I’d hoped. I think maybe I wish we spent more time sooner with the whole AMNH community, rather than having it scattered and flashing back and forth, since by the time a lot of the “reveals” happen, it’s already been so referenced to that the flashback to it feels repetitive. So that meant that I never really connected with the cast, because most of them were dead by the beginning, giving their presence in the flashbacks less weight.

The overall plot is also pretty straightforward and paced so that between the flashbacks and the events themselves, aside from a couple of points, there’s not a lot of respite - it’s all tense, frantic moments, which gets exhausting. It means we don’t get to see a lot of the community building that I was hoping for, and it’s more trauma bonding than actually building.

The epilogue feels almost out of nowhere, like “okay I’m stopping here, but I’ll let you know with a flash-forward how it all wraps up”. It’s very abrupt.

It’s a shame because Eunice Wong has become one of my favorite narrators, but the directed cadence really didn’t fit Nonie as a young girl narrator and it wasn’t clear until later that the whole thing was a flashback.

This felt like a book that was more concept than execution for me. I'm not sure if it fell truly flat or if I've just read too much dystopian fiction recently, but I simply did not enjoy this.

Nonie and her family are living on the roof of NYC’s Museum of Natural History. All the glaciers have melted, the seas have risen and storms are cataclysmic. Nonie, her family and a few other survivors try to create a community and preserve the treasures within the museum. But a devastating storm tears their world apart and Nonie, her sister Bix, their father and their friend Keller must travel the Hudson and find a new way to survive.

This dark dystopian novel has the literary feel of Station Eleven, the heartbreak of The Road and the desperation of Waterworld. It is told from the viewpoint of Nonie, a young girl gifted with the understanding of water and weather but struggling with a neurodivergent of others. She is honest and earnest, intelligent yet emotionally raw.

The group’s trip up the Hudson is harrowing and tense, as they experience violence, illness and injury.

Caffall’s view of a possible future is filled with despair and hope, terrifying endings and new beginnings. Her writing is lovely, as she skillfully describes either a mother’s love or the science of weather and nature.

A thrilling and heartwarming read.

I have a fascination with climate fiction so this literary science fiction novel was right up my alley. It was interesting, slow and contemplative. I liked so many aspects yet I actually felt a touch disappointed since this one never reached the five star potential the plot had. I wish this one had a bit harder with a punchier story. I liked it but I found it's message a bit soft.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

This book alternates back and forth between current day and memories of how the world became to be what it is now, covered in water. Big fan of post apocalyptic type books but I wouldn’t call this one a thriller. It almost has the feeling of Parable of the Sower with some of the main fears and goals, maybe that’s just a thing. While very descriptive I had a difficult time picturing the landscape they were experiencing. How some buildings were standing and others weren’t, I don’t understand how the base is kept together for some but not others given water. On a positive I did like how this book details the lengths they go to protect the artifacts. That isn’t something I have read in similar books. It brought up situations and ideas I wouldn’t have thought of.

This has been posted to Goodreads and fable.

Short chapters. Engaging story. I thoroughly enjoyed this listen. Short chapters. Engaging story. I thoroughly enjoyed this listen.

A child's story of found family and dead dreams. A happy ending clouded by death and loss, the hope of the characters comes through in the story.