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Everyone handles loss differently—whether they hold on to their grief or bottle it up and try to move on or seek out the support of friends and loved ones. In All We Lost Was Everything by Sloan Harlow, one young woman finds herself searching for answers about the ones she lost.
The story finds 18-year-old River Santos still reeling from the loss of everything that once mattered to her: she lost her mother after she simply left one day and didn’t come back, she lost her boyfriend after he broke up with her for seemingly no reason, and she lost her home and her father in a house fire. Now, she shares an apartment with her aunt and works at the local diner with her best friend, Tawny, and handsome but standoffish Logan. But her memories of the parents she loved are shaken when she uncovers a long-hidden secret.
River wasn’t trying to dig for her parents’ secrets; she was just trying to get a copy of her birth certificate, since the original was lost in the fire. But the simple task leads her to discover that her parents had been keeping secrets from her. As she discovers more, though, she begins to realize that her parents weren’t the only ones keeping things from her. Logan—the dark, handsome, and mysterious coworker that she can’t help but fall for—hasn’t told her the truth. Neither has her ex-boyfriend, Noah. And once River uncovers the first unexpected truth, the surprising revelations just keep coming.
The more River learns, then, the harder it is to trust those around her. Everyone is hiding something—so much so, in fact, that it all feels like just a little too much. It’s just hard to believe that almost all of the people around her would be keeping big, important, life-altering secrets. But the story continues to take one twist after another—and even though so many small details along the way raise tiny red flags, you won’t see the conclusion coming. It all makes for a surprising thriller—but one that might be a little too hard to believe.
With its mix of dark secrets and sometimes shockingly steamy romance, All We Lost Was Everything is definitely a heavy, suspenseful read. But not all of the twists and turns seem realistic—and, in the end, it takes a pretty big suspension of disbelief to follow the character through one major revelation after another.
Listen to the review on Shelf Discovery:
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