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A review by paragraphsandpages
All Girls by Emily Layden
4.0
I was a bit wary going into this due to the current GR rating, but I ended up really enjoying this! While I understand how some aspects of this book could put some others off, I really enjoyed those aspects in the end.
This story is almost written as an anthology, switching between smaller stories of individual characters as the larger story slowly unravels. I feel like this style worked perfectly for what this book was trying to accomplish, and I found myself quickly invested in each new girl's story every time. While it was sometimes sad to slip back out of the girl's inner world right when things started getting interesting, it was something I got used to quickly. I liked how each story ended up building upon the other, and getting to see the different perspectives on both the boarding school experience and on the rape case that the school is going through gave a much more rounded picture of it all. We were given so many angles from many different backgrounds, and it was interesting how the same thing could be perceived so differently depending on the girl.
Overall, I felt this was a really strong debut, and it surprised me in so many ways. Anthology style books like this don't always work for me, and I haven't necessarily loved a lot of boarding school books, but the way this was done worked really well in my opinion.
This story is almost written as an anthology, switching between smaller stories of individual characters as the larger story slowly unravels. I feel like this style worked perfectly for what this book was trying to accomplish, and I found myself quickly invested in each new girl's story every time. While it was sometimes sad to slip back out of the girl's inner world right when things started getting interesting, it was something I got used to quickly. I liked how each story ended up building upon the other, and getting to see the different perspectives on both the boarding school experience and on the rape case that the school is going through gave a much more rounded picture of it all. We were given so many angles from many different backgrounds, and it was interesting how the same thing could be perceived so differently depending on the girl.
Overall, I felt this was a really strong debut, and it surprised me in so many ways. Anthology style books like this don't always work for me, and I haven't necessarily loved a lot of boarding school books, but the way this was done worked really well in my opinion.