bri_cm 's review for:

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin

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It’s hard for me to rate this book because while I deeply appreciate it, wow was it a hard read. I am lucky that I am in enough of a decent mental space now that I can mostly distance myself from the spirals of depression and anxiety Gilda experiences and that comprise pretty much all of the novel. Austin does an excellent job of executing stream of conscious here and capturing what it is like to have depression and anxiety. Austin also succeeds in making me feel for Gilda and continue to sympathize with her even as she makes questionable choices that hurt other people. That being said, the ending left me unsatisfied. The phone call apologies she made provided some closure in addition to her conversation with Rosemary, but the most satisfying thing that would have happened didn’t. For me, that would have been Gilda going to therapy. Instead, she basically wakes up and all of a sudden seems to have her life together. I can believe that after her realizations and accepting her emotions, she is in a better emotional and mental state and may even have a good day afterwards. But it is unrealistic to me that after that, she is doing so much better without the help of a professional. I will say, the ending is fairly open, so perhaps her going to therapy is assumed? Still, I think it would have given me more closure if it was actually written that she was going to therapy and if she had a conversation with her family, particularly her brother. Without this, it felt a bit rushed.
Despite having a few qualms, I am glad I read this book. I can’t say that I enjoyed all of it because of the very nature of the novel, but I appreciate that characters like Gilda are being written, especially as someone who relates to her struggles.