Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead

Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead - Emily Austin

Genre: Literary Fiction | LGBT+ Fiction | Adult Fiction

Release Date: 8th July 2021

Trigger Warnings: Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Addiction, Injury, References to death, murder and suicide.

Gilda doesn't want to die - but she can't stop thinking about death. How it works, how inevitable it is, and most of all about how one day something is going to kill her and everybody she cares about. And seeing as she's on first-name basis with most of the local emergency room, she is keenly aware of the many things that could do it.

Existential dread aside, Gilda is breaking under the pressure of her own growing anxiety and of her overbearingly repressive parents and their expectations. On a whim, she decides to attend a free therapy class at a local choice and finds herself in the peculiar situation of accidentally replacing their recently deceased receptionist, Grace. Not the most ideal job for a lesbian atheist but she needs a job anyway and she has gotten very good at pretending.

Amongst getting to grips with her new life, navigating the waters with her almost girlfriend and finding herself deeply invested in finding out what really happened to Grace - Gilda has a choice to make. Finally learn to live her own life, or just waiting around until the day she dies.

"I have to make money to pay my rent, and buy food, and sustain my existence because that is the purpose of my life."

Everyone In This Room was uniquely compelling and engaging, with Gilda capturing my attention within moments of being introduced to her. Suffering with her own mental health issues and societal pressures, she openly shows us the side of mental illness that is usually covered up - the instability, the unreliability, the unrest.

Gilda has two voices - her rational and her irrational, both living in uncomfortable harmony with one another, giving us a deep insight into her mind. This book delves into some dark places, and handles them all brilliantly while still keeping up that morbid humour that made this book so iconic.

Dryly witty and darkly funny - this is a heartrending exploration of the human condition and odd comfort in knowing that some time in the future, everyone in this room will someday be dead.

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you to Emily Austin and Atlantic Books for an ARC in return for an honest review.

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