I just love a multigenerational story, especially one that has such an important message
A well written book

I enjoyed this book. It wasn’t something I would usually read, but it drew me in and kept me reading to the end.

This was my first time reading a book by Jennifer Weiner and I really enjoyed it. The story was very unique and I thought the characters were well developed. I look forward to reading more from the author in the future.

Big fat life story of two Jewish sisters and how their life pans out.
Written so well and such a good story. I do love Jennifer Weiner. Highly recommend.

Mrs. Everything is an engaging and thought-provoking novel telling the stories of sisters, Jo and Bethie Kaufman. The story begins in 1950s Detroit and travels through to present day as both Jo and Bethie try to find happiness and what it means to be a woman. A wonderful book with a relevant message.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a free e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book... A sweeping story of lives lived across a shifting social landscape. It encompasses so many different themes and forces the reader to examine the importance of following your heart as well as your head.

It had me at the recreation of the Temple Mount in chopped liver - possibly one of my favourite literary images of all time. Have recommended to many 9many) people and can't see that changing any time soon.

I LOVED this book. The story of Jo and Bethie was realistic, touching, heartbreaking and such a testament to the complicated relationship of sisters. Sisters who are very different but, in the end, will do anything for one another, The story covers a lifetime and was so interesting to follow the times from the fifties and sixties through to the present day. I really couldn't ask for more.
This was hands down one of the best books I've read in a while - I'll be recommending it to everyone I know!

Starting out in Detroit in the 1950’s this is the story of the Kaufman sisters, Jo and Bethie who are polar opposites. However as the sixties begin nether of their lives are Turing out how they expected.

Jennifer Weiner always deals with the complexities of sisterhood with such compassion. A beautiful story.

😊 Mrs. Everything is Jennifer Weiner's latest novel, an immersive, sophisticated and multigenerational story. The novel features the Kaufman sisters from Detroit, as they grow up in the 1950's. Jo and Bethie couldn't be more different; Jo is the tomboy, with a passion to make the world more fair and favouring sport; Bethie is pretty and feminine, and dreams of a traditional life.

The novel is narrated by the two sisters. The reader follows them from their childhoods until they are senior citizens. The Kaufman family is Jewish and the parents’ immigration plays a large role in the novel.

There is a wide variety of eclectic, cross-generational characters in this meaningful novel, adding enrichment and interest to the story. I certainly got to fully appreciate the author's impressive characterisation talents. The characters are vulnerable and have massive flaws, often making perplexing choices, and there's an underlying need for acceptance and forgiveness. Jo and Bethie and many of the secondary players show compassion and feeling to each other and offer help, although sometimes this doesn't always manifest itself in the right ways.

Although at 500+ pages this is rather a long story, the stylish, evenly paced plotline and the clarity of Jennifer Weiner's writing makes it easy to follow and my desire to see it through didn't waver. I thought this book was absolutely fantastic and it imparted some important subtexts. This is a story about sexuality, religion, racism, sexism, and so many more important topics. While it lacks the humour of some of her previous books, such as Good in Bed and In Her Shoes, Mrs. Everything still has everything else.

I enjoyed Mrs. Everything so much, I didn't want to put it down! A smart, entertaining, very highly recommended read and if you can get through the information overload, it is well worth it. My thanks must go to Jennifer Weiner for writing such an impressive, sophisticated and exhilarating book! 😊

I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel at my request from Little, Brown Book Group UK/ Piatkus via NetGalley and this review is my unbiased opinion.

Such a heart wrenching emotional story. I really enjoyed it even if bits were very hard to read! Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review

So, 'Mrs Everything,' by Jennifer Weiner...I give this 3 and 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4. I have read a couple of her books and generally enjoyed them, but I have to admit that this one nearly lost me. It began slowly and then laboured on for the first 20-30%, and just when I was beginning to wonder if I would bother, it suddenly got more interesting.
Revolving primarily around Bethie and Jo, and told from each of their perspectives as the years progressed, 'Mrs Everything' really is about everything; racism, religion, rape, abortion, same sex relationships, mixed race marriages, gender roles, wealth, poverty, drugs, communes...and more! It is more or less a family saga following Bethie and Jo from childhood to adulthood and into old age, and the years it spans are times of great change, when the role of women post-second world war came increasingly under scrutiny. Considering the sheer quantity of social change covered in 'Mrs Everything,' I think the author does a great job of keeping it all together, tying up story threads and concluding with a strong ending.
An enjoyable read, and worth sticking with.

Mrs Everything is a very apt title for this book, the first I have read by Jennifer Weiner, as it looks at so many different aspects of being a woman, from sisterhood to motherhood to friendship, love and romance. The book follows two very different sisters, Jo and Beth, from their childhood in Detroit in the 1950's through their teenage years in the 60's and the college campus life in the 1970s to almost the current day.
The two girls are very different, smart and sporty Jo dreams of being a writer and has a difficult relationship with their mother, while beautiful Beth is the apple of her eye and is popular at school. Life rarely goes according to plan however and over the course of the decades ,and the traumas and tragedies they both face, the girls become women living in very different circumstances than they imagined, with Jo settled down as a young mother who lives on the sidelines, observing life but not really participating, while Beth is a hippie wild child living on a commune , and each blames the other , at least in part for how things ended up,
This is a book that really encourages us to look at the expectations we have for ourselves and others ,and to re-evaluate where we are in our quest for self discovery. The story of these two sisters are the stories of so many women, and it is not hard to recognise ourselves and others we know in their narratives. The author does a fantastic job with her characters , it would be far too easy to have one sister be "good" and the other "bad", to have the reader root for one over the other, but I genuinely found myself feeling for both women as their stories unfolded.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Jennifer Weiner isn't as widely read in the UK as in the US, but I've been a fan of her books since her debut, Good In Bed. If a comparison is useful, I think she's one of the authors who comes closest to Marian Keyes - writing what may seem at first glance like feel-good 'chick lit' novels about family, friendship and romance, but in reality doing something way more gritty and realist than many reviewers (and publisher's marketing teams) seem to realise. Interestingly, both Keyes and Weiner have been involved in controversy for criticising this pigeonholing of fiction written by women as 'chick lit' (I'm a big fan of Keyes anyway, but if I wasn't I'd have been converted after her recent - ironic! before the not all men crowd start weighing in - statement that “I only read women. I know that men write books. But their lives are so limited. It’s such a small and narrow experience.”)

Mrs Everything follows the stories of Jo and Bethie (was the nod to Little Women intentional, I wonder?), the sisters of a lower middle class Jewish family in 1950s Detroit whose lives diverge sharply as they grow older. It's a gripping read, and one that tackles big questions about family, sexuality, abuse, illness and the experiences of women during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, finally asking: what does it mean to forgive both yourself and others? More pertinently, it does what male authors such as Roth, Updike or Franzen have been allowed to do for years: seeks to tell wider human truths through the specific experience of one character. Where Updike's Harry Angstrom, for example, was allowed to stand in as a "Universal Man", female authors writing female characters have rarely been allowed the same. Mrs Everything, like the best novels of Keyes', excels at finding humour even in the bleakest of events and at elucidating these larger human truths through the experiences of Jo and Bethie.

It has been a while since I have read anything by this author and so was really glad to be given the opportunity to read and review her latest book.
The book is a very thought provoking and emotional read that will stay with me for a long time. Would definitely recommend.

Really well written coming of age story, loved it!
Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Wow. I went into Mrs Everything with no expectations whatsoever; I had no idea what to expect never having read any of, nor admittedly having heard of, Jennifer Weiner's writing.

I absolutely loved this book. It had me gripped and I couldn't wait to dive back in at any opportunity I had. After reading the book, I was shocked to see it had only averaged to 3.85 stars on GoodReads as it deserves FAR more than this. The characters were interwoven so well and the way Weiner writes detail, in such a precise yet not overwhelming way, is just beautiful. I laughed and I cried and I want to read it all over again.

Safe to say I will be diving into more of Jennifer Weiner's work as soon as possible.

Thank you so much Little Brown Book Company for this ARC.

This was one of those books that I read at every single chance I could get.
It's definitely more of a character driven book than plot driven, and that might not be for everyone, but I found the two main characters, Bethie and Jo to be such well developed, complex, realistic characters that it was just such a great read.

The story brings us through so many different key moments of the 20th century, and the sisters' lives as they go through these moments.

The story deals incredibly well with the topic of feminism and what it means to be a woman and how that role has changed and been redefined over the decades, but also how complex it was for change to happen over the years. It touches on topics like the stereotypical 50s housewife role, sexual abuse, women's liberation, the hippie movement, suburban living and the gender roles that go with that, unsupportive husbands, unfaithful husbands, homosexuality and the fight racial equality. It uses Bethie and Jo as the vehicles to explore these topics and the result is an incredibly rich, compelling history of these women's lives and experiences.

I can honestly say this was one of my favourite reads for quite some time, there was so much I could relate to and it was so easy to feel empathy for these characters.

#MrsEverything #NetGalley
An ok read.
This is not my reading genre but I read it and it's good for its genre lovers.
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.
Thanks to NetGalley and Sphere for giving me an advanced copy.

An absolutely beautiful coming of age book. I raced through this. I laughed and I cried. Highly recommended xxx