Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner @jenniferweinr @atriabooks #bookreview #mrseverything

Happy Thursday everybody!

I loooved this book and I am so excited to share my review with you! This was just one of those books that will stick with me for a very long time!💕

My Thoughts

This book was EVERYTHING! So powerful, so emotional, so beautiful, so absorbing. I was completely invested from page 1 in these character’s lives, I did not want the book to end. This book spans five decades as we watch sisters Jo and Bethie figure themselves and the world out. From Detroit to Atlanta, from the 50s to the 2000s we watch these sisters and those they love navigate their way through this thing we call life. We see them succeed and fail, grow and stumble, love and lose, laugh and cry. Jennifer Weiner evoked every possible emotion in me with her words. I laughed, I cried, I smiled, and I shook my head. Life is hard and it is complicated. Neither Jo or Bethie had it easy, but they fought and loved their way to their best lives. This was an unforgettable book that left me with a smile on my face and a tear in my eye.

I wrote the above last night and I was going to add to it today, but I don’t think I need to. But I will say this being pride month I think this book really did a wonderful job with Jo’s struggle to truly accept herself. Of course this became easier as the country became more tolerant, but still can you imagine having to repress your true self for years and years and years? And I’m sure this was much more common than we know. I hope that one day everyone will be accepting of who people choose to love. This book really brought home how far we have come, but we still have so far to go. OK I will stop preaching! Just do yourself a favor pick this book up and read it, it is quite fabulous!

*** Big thanks to Atria for my copy of this book ***

About the Book

From Jennifer Weiner, the number-one New York Times best-selling author of Who Do You Love and In Her Shoes comes a smart, thoughtful, and timely exploration of two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present as they struggle to find their places – and be true to themselves – in a rapidly evolving world. Mrs. Everything is an ambitious, richly textured journey through history – and herstory – as these two sisters navigate a changing America over the course of their lives.
Do we change or does the world change us?
Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise.
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world more fair; Bethie is the pretty, feminine good girl, a would-be star who enjoys the power her beauty confers and dreams of a traditional life.
But the truth ends up looking different from what the girls imagined. Jo and Bethie survive traumas and tragedies. As their lives unfold against the background of free love and Vietnam, Woodstock and women’s lib, Bethie becomes an adventure-loving wild child who dives headlong into the counterculture and is up for anything (except settling down). Meanwhile, Jo becomes a proper young mother in Connecticut, a witness to the changing world instead of a participant. Neither woman inhabits the world she dreams of, nor has a life that feels authentic or brings her joy. Is it too late for the women to finally stake a claim on happily-ever-after?
In her most ambitious novel yet, Jennifer Weiner tells a story of two sisters who, with their different dreams and different paths, offer answers to the question: How should a woman be in the world?