Reviews - Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

13.8k reviews for:

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

Emily Austin

3.99 AVERAGE

mirandalync16's review

5.0

challenging dark emotional funny sad fast-paced

kaleigha_n's review against another edition

2.5

emotional funny lighthearted sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

ilicn's review

3.5

emotional funny reflective sad medium-paced

karentrrs's review against another edition

5.0

I’ve never felt like a book was ever able to honestly portray what it’s like to have uncontrollable thoughts and anxiety like this book does. This is the opposite of reading a book to escape reality, it’s like being in your own head x100. Loved it

ajobyanyothername's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

This is one of those books that gripped me from start to finish and felt like an xray into my brain. Gilda is neurotic, nerdy, and info-dumps to herself and others at every occasion. She is tender-hearted and compassionate and also can't seem to give that to herself. One of the things that felt the most poignant to me was her intense care for Eli. I actually almost had to stop reading at one point because it felt like she was being ripped directly from my journal/memory.

Entertainment - full marks, I couldn't put it down
Plot - funny as fuck, and utterly unhinged
Prose - "eating an unsliced loaf of bread like an unsupervised goat in a bakery" is worth five stars all by itself
Characters - this is where I almost might take off a bit, because I wanted to know more about her parents and others. On the other hand, their development is understandably limited by Gilda's own limitations, so I can't really blame it for that.
Magic Star - well yes

5/5

reillypepper's review against another edition

4.25

emotional inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

people who experience anxiety find it much easier to empathize with non-chronically anxious people than non-chronically anxious people can empathize with chronically anxious people.

my favorite thing about the ending is that there was no magical epiphany or “poof” that just made Gilda not experience anxiety, that made her just okay with death. too often stories about mental health ending in a “fix,” insinuating that anyone with mental health struggles has to be “fixed” to live a fulfilling life. emily austin wrote such an inclusive protagonist with a voice of a person free of internalized, exclusive perspectives from Catholicism (& Western religion altogether), and Gilda’s blunt take about religious traditions like communion had me, a deconstructed girl, laughing my ass off. like, sure, it’s funny in general, but it’s funny when you’ve grown up with family and peers making those traditions seem so much more than what they actually are.

one of my fav parts of this read is the realities of talking to people in organized religion as well as those who don’t actively practice religion (her parents) but still exhibit internalized religious sentiment that those in the organized christianity believe (bc colonization and white hetero institutionalization etc. etc.)

i’ll carry Gilda’s honesty, courage, humor, and articulation of anxiety through forever. and i will be reading all of emily austin’s works xxxx