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All I Want opens with a wild moment of horror as a heavily pregnant woman disturbs the local community talent show with her screaming, right in the middle of a woman’s performance of Wouldn’t it Be Lurvely? from My Fair Lady. That scream carries throughout the book, but it never manages to be quite as interesting as that fraught opening prologue. And the last two chapters waste its potential in an utterly groan-worthy twist.
Married city dwellers Emma and Broadway producer Ben (is the author a Friends fan?), decide to trade the New York life for a quiet suburban one in the wake of Emma’s announcement that she’s pregnant. They hunt for houses in upstate New York and find a fixer-upper. After moving in, Emma has an extremely bad feeling about the place which seems to portend bad omens at every corner no matter how stately its “bones” are. The oak tree out back keeps shifting positions. There are rats in the basement, the attic is a pigsty, and before long a bat invades the master bedroom. Oh, and there’s a graveyard in the back yard. Heavy Christian symbolism hangs everywhere, and Emma keeps seeing a woman and her baby in the yard. Emma finds an old diary written by the house’s previous owner back in the 1950s. She begins to relate to her.
What’s going on? Is Emma hallucinating? Is there a sinister presence in the house? Or is it something else? And if her marriage is so strong, why is she drawn to the guy they hired to refurbish the house, a handsome fellow named JT?
If you’ve read a thriller – any thriller – in the past three years, you’ve probably already got the answer to all those questions on lock. All I Want goes to such truly over-the-top extremes to try to wring shock out of its audience that I honestly want to give it credit for being as out-and-out bizarre as it is as it throws almost every single horror-related cliché onto its pyre. If only that admirable sense of weirdness had stuck around. But it blows through its goodwill with predictable plot twists and squanders its welcome with an annoying double-twist ending that retroactively explains all that went before it with Wizard of Oz-level coincidences. It throws everything into the reader (and Emma’s) path to keep them from reaching a conclusion that’s foregone by the midpoint of the book.
Emma is a likable enough girl, with her simple dreams of motherhood and her love of family, but she looks like an utter ninny to stay at this rickety, tumbling-down Victorian manse while she’s pregnant. Would you stay in a place with an unreinforced balcony and animals in the acttic if you were in your first trimester? Emma does. That says all you need to know about her. Ben is so vague that his blandishments and concern are easy to see through. JT, meanwhile, is pure goodness personified.
This is a mystery, and not a romance, so I probably don’t need to tell you that this is less than a HEA/HFN read. All I Want is a fun ride when it runs on its own atmosphere, but its plot sends it careening headfirst down a steep staircase.
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Grade: C-
Book Type: Psychological Thriller
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 01/02/22
Publication Date: 01/2022
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
I am so sick of twists that just make me groan. :(