A review by danaaliyalevinson
Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, by Emily Austin

dark emotional funny sad fast-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

4.0

This book was a quick read and oftentimes laugh out loud funny. As someone who deals with an anxiety disorder, I thought it was a great representation of what untreated anxiety looks like. I also thought the way that the book physically laid out intrusive thoughts, circuitous thinking, and catastrophizing, on the page to be really on point and effective. There was some genre bending stuff that didn’t really work for me. And also
Spoilerthe subplot with Eli was ill-advised imho. I’m a trans woman. Professionally, I am a writer, and I’m also a transgender media consultant. While the storyline wasn’t necessarily offensive, it treated Eli’s trans identity as a sidebar and also made it all about the external experience (his hair, the stealing of clothes, the nail polish, etc). It was very basic and I found it unnecessary and not given enough space to be good trans representation. Also I am using he/him pronouns to refer to this character because those are the only pronouns used in the book and in an imaginary world where this person is real, we don’t yet know what pronouns he’d use.
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