If Only This Were (Kinda) Real: “All This & More” by Peng Shepherd

Not gonna lie: I am not doing well.

Given this last week and the election, I am resolved to stay in a self-care bubble for as long as I can, trying to avoid not so much reality, rather confrontation with it. I’m not so delusional as to be sitting here pretending that Evil Personified didn’t just win again, I just don’t want to give that individual even a speck of my attention. I don’t want to hear his voice, I don’t want to see his face.

I have deleted the shell of what Twitter once was, and am avoiding my other social media accounts for the time being. Because, self care.

The upside to refusing to doomscroll, or engage at all, really, is that I have found I actually do have time to read. (Apparently, as do others — I had a mammogram this week and six out of the seven of us in the waiting room were reading actual books — the first time I have seen that in a very long time.) Maybe it was just serendipitous, but next up on my TBR list was Peng Shepherd’s “All This & More,” which I had seen on several “best books this fall” lists.

It was a good time to read about being in a bubble.

Shepherd’s protagonist Marsh is the unlikely star of the third season of the latest reality TV darling, “All This & More,” which allows a single contestant to relive past moments in their life that may allow for a different choice and a different life pathway and outcome — the goal being that you can make your life perfect.

Marsh finds herself at midlife, sans husband, sans career and most recently having flubbed a potential opportunity to pick up and start over with an old flame in her high school boyfriend, Ren. The show is the perfect chance to try again. To get a do-over.

Unfortunately, do-overs do not come without consequences. And every time she makes a choice, it impacts those she loves — especially her daughter Harper and her ex-husband, Dylan.

And it doesn’t take Marsh too long to discover that despite the myriad choices she makes, she’s not really the one pulling the strings inside her quantum bubble experience. Cue fantasy thriller fiction in three, two, one …

I think because the book has a lot of media traction, I was expecting something a little bit different. It’s good, for sure. Distracting from real life at the moment if you need some escapism. Having Marsh and Dylan and Harper and Ren to focus on every time my mind drifted to He Who Shall Not Be Named was quite lovely. What’s more, there’s intentional reader engagement in the form of “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style options for readers to pick from throughout the novel. I chose to read it in a linear fashion, because I just don’t want to have to make any choice at the moment. But I like that I *could* have if I wanted to. Readers are force to cosplay it regardless at the end of the novel, and I enjoyed choosing the path for Marsh that felt the most realistic for me.

Is it a little over the top? Maybe. I’d like to know about why Marsh ended up in some of the roles she did — I feel like there would have been more to learn about her wanting to explore some of the pathways readers see her on. But you know what? Sometimes it is nice just to embrace the author’s journey for you. It’s been a craptastic year, so if Marsh wants me to follow along as she becomes an environmental warrior photographer or a world-famous telenova actress, so be it. I’m going to stop asking questions and just enjoy the ride.

You can live a life of “what ifs” for sure. I doubt most anyone doesn’t think about making different life decisions from time to time. But much like my reading style with this book, I imagine I will emerge from my bubble at some point and forge a path straightforward into the future in just a bit. What choice do any of us really have? (I already fantasized about moving abroad and it’s going to have to stay a fantasy for now.)

Just give me a little while longer inside my news-free zone with my TBR shelf in front of me. So much reading to do and now so much time!