All This & More by Peng Shepherd

45-year-old Marsh is the lucky contender on the third season of All This and More, a reality television show that uses quantum technology to change reality, enabling them to change their past and future. Marsh never followed her dreams of becoming a lawyer, traveling, lacks a romantic relationship and was recently fired (ouch). She's given the opportunity over the course of the television season to see these alternate reality options and keep perfecting them until ultimately, she would have to pick the reality to become real in the season finale. But, is everything really in her control? It seems like other forces are impacting the choices she makes, and over the course of the episodes it becomes apparent to Marsh that something is definitely wrong, and it's up to her to figure out what before everyone she cares about's lives are changed forever.

If you could go back or forward in time and change the choices you made over the course of your life, would you? Maybe you'd get the degree you always wanted, or move to a certain place, or spend more time with a loved one before they were gone. Even temporarily to live in those realities for a small amount of time for the experience of it. Marsh has the opportunity to change and change and keep changing to make everything "perfect". The endless seeking of perfection comes with its own problems, and each reality option in the effort to fix one thing leads to unwanted consequences in something else. The saying, "too good to be true" couldn't be more accurate. There's also some interesting ethics issues on changing the lives of other people connected to Marsh without their input and awareness that would have been interesting to further explore. I'm surprised that there was no government oversight on it. That would be another interesting (and necessary, I think), aspect to add if there was a sequel.

Beyond the topic of the book itself, I initially loved the format where you choose how the story ends and the choices that Marsh makes in The Bubble (what they call the technology that lets you change reality). Each choice for something else to be changed are not entirely distinct chapters with elements and sometimes exact phrases mixed in from previous choices the reader had made before. This allows the mystery to occur, the suspicious feeling that something is not quite right with how details get mushed together. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to write this type of book and get multiple storylines to make sense, and be consistent with clues in the overall mystery. I also will say that it was a fitting format for the plot to help with reader engagement and connecting with Marsh where you are making choices while Marsh also makes choices. However, loving the premise of getting to choose what happens next leads to some unique issues. 

 If you don't keep track of your choices, you end up often right back where you started reading the same thing that you did before, almost like being stuck in a time loop. What would have been very helpful was to have something like a mind map that illustrates visually what leads to what to help if you basically get lost. It is difficult to retrace your steps if you wanted to go back and read a certain section over again. It seemed like almost all of the major mystery-solving revelations occurred in this one specific section that I then could not remember where it was to read again. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what the point was in making it a choose-your-own-adventure format if the reader ends up going in circles and selecting every other choice anyway to get out. The premise and idea was excellent, but the execution lacking.The mystery itself was fairly well-written and the core revelations were foreshadowed just enough to not spoiler it but still make the truth shocking. Shepherd's talent likely lies in her mystery writing, and I likely would have enjoyed the book more without the choices as a full-blown mystery novel.

Are there other choose-your-own-adventure books you'd recommend?

Title: All This & More
Author: Peng Shepherd

Publisher: William Morrow
Pages: 469
Series: No
Rating: 3 Stars
Goodreads