gameoftomes 's review for:

One for All by Lillie Lainoff

4.5

adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

---

Woah, this one hit home. I don’t have POTS like main character Tania de Batz, daughter of D’Artagnan (the fictional one in Dumas’s The Three Musketeers, not the historical one). But I do have Sjögren’s related small fiber neuropathy and autonomic neuropathy. In short, my immune system attacks the nerves in my feet, hands, organs, and tissue. It manifests similar symptoms to POTS: fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, nausea, rapid heart beat, and difficulty walking and moving. 

Because of the chronically ill connection some passages really hit hard. About feeling distanced from society, about the fear of getting sicker every time you have a good day, about how quickly other people’s empathy can expire, about reconciling your illness as a part of you. And having a chronically ill heroine sword fight and spy and gain a sisterhood who want to make the world a better place is a balm I did not know I needed.

I do like the episodic nature of their missions and training; I know not everyone likes that in a novel. The plot is predictable. If you go in knowing that, you can have fun and focus on the characters. Our quartet was well-developed, with everyone having a full life and defined personality. I enjoyed the minor characters as well, they are not cookie cutter, but tended to only have a couple of functions. But our core characters grew into a great sisterhood, complicated but accepting and nourishing each other. 

Lainoff manages to never let it be a sob story while letting us into the reality of being chronically ill in a past time. The narrative doesn’t brush off the illness either. It’s still a YA historical fiction retelling of a classic work, so some tropes from those parts still find a home in this novel. But I strongly feel it’s worth the read, unless the caveats I mentioned turn you off as a reader. 

My favorite book of all time is The Count of Monte Cristo, written by the same author as The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas. You are not getting another Dumas work in One for All, it never pretends to be that. Lainoff is also chronically ill, an expert fencer, and a writer. One for All embeds all of that into a YA novel above the standard. I read a copy from my library, but I plan to purchase my own copy, to highlight passages with meaning to me and to have as a part of my personal library. There is something to owning a book, like showing others a part of your mind, your soul. To encourage thinking, to find faults, to connect, to having a shared conversation with other readers. This book isn’t perfect, but it has a special kind of literary magic that has lodged itself in my brain. 

9/10 stars, highly subjective.