All the Water in the World is a heart-wrenching and poignant story. Eve is mother to Maddy, who has been battling childhood cancer for some time. The story switches between the two perspectives and in this way, the reader is able to gain a deeper insight into the feelings of each as they navigate their way through life, growing up and learning what it is to live with heartbreak. Maddy is a remarkable character - whilst being consumed with her illness and the treatment of it, she is nevertheless determined to live her life fully. She falls in love and inspires a generation with her art. She traces her absent father and develops a relationship with him, which is something her mother only discovers in the second part of this novel. Eve is a selfless mother who devotes herself to ensuring her daughter is loved and cherished. It is only in the second half of this remarkable book that we get to know her as a woman, one who is forced to confront the past and in doing so, is able to face the present. This story will make you cry and want to hug your loved ones a little harder. Beautifully understated and life-affirming.

Teenager Maddy has cancer. Her treatment is debilitating. She lives with mother Eve and her mother's boyfriend. Her Spanish student father left before she was born. Maddy and Eve narrate the story.

A gentle story of teenage awakening. Maddy is the primary narrator and it has the feel of a Young Adult novel. I didn't find it compelling, persevered, but bailed out part way through.

This is the story of Eve and her daughter, Maddie. They each tell part of the story from their own perspective. Maddie is 16 and has cancer. She has that teenage mix of being sometimes quite grown up and, at other times, so young. She is also in touch with her father by email secretly, not having seen him since she was born. Eve’s own perspective is very moving as she unravels in the face of her daughter’s illness and makes some questionable choices of he own. Robin, Eve’s partner and Jack, Maddy’s boyfriend, are also very real characters who bring their own confusion and sadness to the story. There is enough looking forward at the end to save this from being a wallowing book. I would recommend this. Thanks to Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Decent story good backdrop
Good characters if you can empathise with them
Worth a read if you are in to this genre.

All the Water in the World by Karen Raney manages to deal with very difficult subjects like cancer, death, relationships and the impact of anger and regrets on behaviour and life choices. The relationship between Maddy and her mum Evie is a close and loving one yet you know that Evie is distanced from her own mother. As a grandmother it’s so lovely to have an insight into that special bond between Maddy & her grandparents regardless of Evie’s almost transactional approach to them “I was not beholden to my parents anymore. I no longer had to bide my time or hold my tongue because I needed them for Maddy.” The book explores the complexity of relationships in this way, placing hope and love alongside resentment and perceived wrongs. It’s one that I know will stay with me for quite some time and I’ll revisit some of the issues and thoughts. Overall I just love the underpinning message of Hope delivered by Jack “Did you know....that all the water in the world is all there will ever be?.....We’re made out of water. But the thing is, there’s a fixed amount. It can’t be added to or taken away. It just changes into another form.” How precious a thought!

A very well written, descriptive story, dealing with some very tough and thought provoking issues.  Will keep you gripped and involved with the characters.  The story is sad, but still very inspiring.

This is a really moving novel told from dual perspectives – Maddy who is sixteen and has cancer, and her mum Eve. We hear from both of them in alternating chapters and it really is an exploration of coming to terms with loss and of trying to connect when things are going wrong. I really enjoyed that it fully explored both perspectives not just from the point of view of them as mother and daughter but also who they are as people. There is real honesty in this book and these two characters felt so real to me. This book really got me in the gut for so many reasons and it’s one that I keep finding myself thinking about. It’s tender, honest and stunning – I definitely recommend this book.

Thank you to netgalley.co.uk for giving me a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I really enjoyed this book, I loved the characters. The book was quite slow at the beginning of the novel, and honestly I thought about giving it up, however, it got so much better towards the end. The writer seemed to like she needed time to really get to grips with her writing style which I hope will improve as she writes more.

All the Water in the World is basically a book about how a normal family cope with the grief of losing a child. Told from the perspective of Maddy, a terminally ill 16 year old, and her mother Eve. I liked the split between the two ladies, and found both of their narratives equally interesting. The introduction of Antonio was what really made the story interesting, and I'm glad that thread of the story was fully explored. 

I felt that some of the book was a little flat, and because of this it didn't always hold my full interest. Some passages of dialogue were a little confusing, and there was just something lacking from the general writing, that is perhaps due to the book being a debut. Having said this, I did enjoy the book, and it would be ideal for anyone who enjoys a gentle contemporary.

All the water in the world  - Karen Rayney

Tender, poignant, full of love, I loved this book. So amazing book for a first novel – I can only look forward to whatever Karen Rayney produces next. The writing is so subtle that I hardly notice my eyes moving along the page – I am inside this story and alongside these characters. 

Maddy is 16, lives with her mother and is creative, brave and scared. She has cancer and knows that her life is under constant threat. But how she wants to live!  She has a close family – her grandparents, her mother, and her kitten Cloud. But there are secrets – who is her father and why was he always absent?  Is it alright to want to know even if it could upset the delicate balance of mother-daughter intimacy?

At one point the author gives us the meaning behind the title and this has stayed in my head for days. All the water in the world is all the water there ever was or will be – just in different forms.  This brings us close to the sort of questions an intelligent girl of 16 who knows she may die soon is thinking. As well as falling in love and having her first sexual relationship, as well as seeking out the truth about her Spanish father, she is trying to understand the mysteries of life.  A beautifully written book. I loved it.

This is a decent read about family / mother / daughter relationships, facing a terminal illness and death.

It’s a good premise and I loved it at the beginning. However, part way through I began to struggle and lose concentration with it and the characters.

It’s told from the perspective of Maddy a young girl with cancer and her mother, Eve and this differing of perspective worked for me.

Overall, a good debut novel and I’m grateful to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to preview.

This is a brilliant read. There is so much sadness in this story. This is a thought provoking story which will stay with me for a long time. 

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

This is a poignant, emotionally charged and well written story that kept hooked till the end.
I loved the well thought cast of characters and the style of writing.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Strongly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Strong characterisation and the voices of both mother and daughter, the main protagonists, hook you in to this lovely book.
This is a story of normal teenage angst of the daughter woven into serious life changing events and having to deal with difficult relationships (father she's never met) and lovely ones too (her grandparents). 
This book comes from the narratives of both the daughter and her mother and really makes you think hard about love and life, The plot carries you through to the ending,  Full of secrets, emotion and poignancy.

I was drawn to this book as reference had been made to Celeste Ng however for me it just didn’t deliver as I’d hoped it would . The story is narrated by daughter Maddy who is dealing with cancer and also her mother from another perspective. I did warm to Maddy and found the chapters focusing on her were far more moving and if anything would love to have read more and less of her mother . The book is certainly well written but reads more like a YA book and would be something fans of A Fault in our Stars would enjoy . Sadly I wasn’t gripped by the book and for me it was just an average read. Thanks netgalley for this advance copy .

I loved this book so savoured it, reading only parts of it over 3 days rather than devouring it in one sitting. Maddy’s musings on life, the universe and our place in it were so thought provoking and the titular truism that all the worlds water is just endlessly recycled is both lovely and scary in equal measure!
The authors characterisations were very strong, especially Maddy, Eve and Eve’s parents but I felt Robin was less defined and I was never truly sure if Eve really loved him. I was glad that the final chapters had Robin come into his own and be more present rather than on the fringes as he was earlier in the book. 
As a mother of 4 children the books realism was hard to take at times and I came away from each reading thanking the Lord that my kids are so rudely healthy. My sorrow at Maddy’s death was real and being able to make me cry is always the mark of a truly brilliant novel. 
Having grown up on a lake in the USA, the cabin chapters were my favourite parts, especially her descriptions of the noises frozen lakes make and the discussions about how thick ice needs to be to walk on it. 

This book is truly contemporary fiction. It captures the fear and unavoidable evidence of climate change and uses it as a background of slow death of the earth behind the more immediate death of Maddy. I so wish her video was real and I could google it and watch it! Eve and Robin’s memories of driving over lakes in the winter is my memory also and now I live back in the UK it made me realise that my memories are trapped in the 1980’s and that climate change now means the guaranteed snowy winters and foot thick ice are probably consigned to the memories of people my age who still live there. That is a heartbreaking thought for me so I am glad they are locked in my box of memories and that I don’t have to face their reality every year. 
Maddy and Jack’s relationship was beautiful and touching and I agree with the author that it was right for Maddy to have experienced sex and love before she died. It just felt right, tender and loving and not at all sensational or explicit. I’m not sure every author could handle it with such sensitivity.

I am definitely looking forward to future books by this author and will be recommending this book to my friends. Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Maddy is a typical teenager. She is sixteen, curious about life, clever and has a boyfriend Jack.  She also has her mum, Eve and her partner, Robin and loving grandparents. However, she also has cancer.
She has never met her father, Antonio, but tracks him down with the help of her grandfather and begins to email him. 
This is her story. It explores relationships between families when under pressure and also young love and wanting to make a difference.
It will break your heart.

I’d like to thank John Murray Press, Two Roads and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘All The Water In The World’ by Karen Raney in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Maddy is sixteen and wise for her years, and despite having cancer she tries to live life to the full.  She has meaningful relationships with her mother Eve and her grandparents and has her first romantic encounter with Jack.  Although Maddy has never met her father Antonio who, when he heard of Eve’s pregnancy said he didn’t want to be a father, she does manage to track him down and they connect by writing to each other.

‘All The Water In The World’ is an interesting novel with the narrative told by Eve and Maddy.   It tells of the relationship between mother and daughter and describes how Maddy questions her grandparents on the existence of God and the meaning of life.  Although it didn’t really hold by attention as much as I’d hoped for, it’s been well-written, is thought-provoking and worth reading.

This was a book that did not hold my interest all the way through. I did not really engage with the characters and feel it was almost a young adult story. I picked it up as it was compared to Celeste Ng but I believe that this was unrealistic. The parts written by Maddy, the daughter with cancer,  I found more interesting and thoughtful than her mother, Eve's story.
Unfortunately, although I did read it all it was not for me.

I found this a devastating book and beautifully written. Some really insightful observations and perfectly captured turn of phrase.

Of the dual narratives, I found Maddie's the more engaging. I loved everything about her voice. So many moving and thought-provoking observations. With Eve, I felt her grief keenly but I didn't care as much about some of what happened in her side of the narrative. Really I wanted more of Maddie's perspective.

There is a water theme woven throughout the novel, as you might guess from the title: water and ice and the rising sea levels. I was fascinated by the descriptions of Maddy's animation and what it symbolised, personal and global tragedy. That backdrop of climate change makes everything that happens in the novel more desperate and more poignant, somehow.

The coda, though, left me in floods of tears. It's perhaps the closest I've ever come to feeling what the last few minutes of a life must be like. Almost unbearable.

Not perfect (what is?), but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it. 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5.