An enjoyable read, well written and entertaining. Hadn't read this author before but would consider reading again.

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

This book I actually listened to on audio, and I loved the stream of consciousness. It made it like I was listening to a friend, so I'd definitely recommend consuming the book this way. I found it a really insightful account of what it's like to be in the mind of someone with anxiety, particularly health anxiety. It was sad how she wasn't listened to and taken seriously when she so badly needed help.

Great book and one I'll definitely be recommending.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is the debut novel from Emily Austin. The book follows the life of anxious over-thinker Gilda, who loses her job and has a small car accident. Finding herself employed by the catholic church, despite being gay, and notably not catholic, Gilda navigates life, tries to maintain a relationship with her girlfriend, accidentally gains a catholic boyfriend and gets sucked into the investigation of a possible murder.

This book is less about the plot and more about the character. We spend a lot of time in Gilda's head, hearing her inner thoughts and preoccupations with various things, quite often parts of her body and her own mortality. As a fairly anxious person and lapsed catholic, a lot of this book resounded with me and I did actually laugh out loud a few times. The book though does have some darker elements, Gilda's anxiety is pretty debilitating and leaves her considering suicide and visiting the hospital on a regular basis. The somewhat meandering and character centric style appealed to me and I will look forward to reading her follow up.

One of my top reads of 2021! I selected this book on Netgalley because the description included lots of the things I personally like to read and write about myself. Gilda is a somewhat neurotic 27 year old who, attending a church in the hopes of free therapy, is assumed to be there for a job interview and is promptly offered a role as the Church receptionist. Desperate for work, she accepts, but as a lesbian atheist, also somewhat misrepresents herself to secure the job. Gilda is obsessed with death, terrified but also fascinated, and thinks about it constantly. She is a regular at A&E where exhausted nurses deal with her panic attacks. She neglects her flat, ignoring broken objects and washing up, while simultaneously worrying that she might accidentally cause a fire and kill all her neighbours. I loved Gilda. She's a mess but I found her totally real' and entirely interesting. The book is written in the first person so Gilda's voice is unfiltered and you see the world through her eyes, in all its glorious confusion. Sometimes she's incredibly irritating, her communication skills can be poor and she fails to engage properly with the girlfriend she clearly adores. Other times you can't help but love her. Of particular note to me was how, on receiving emails meant for the recently deceased previous Church receptionist Grace, she feels so brokenhearted at having to tell someone that their friend has died that she simply continues the email conversation as Grace, sharing recipes and kind wishes with an old woman on the other side of the country. If you think that this book sounds like a simple exercise in millennial navel gazing I implore you to give i go because I really didn't feel that that was the case. There's so much of life happening around Gilda that she's desperately trying to engage with: a mystery surrounding Grace's death, her brother's struggles with addiction, keeping up the pretence surrounding her identity so she can keep her job. She's full of empathy for others that she isn't always sure what to do with and I found this aspect of her personality so endearing.

I started reading this book late one night when my anxious mind wouldn't settle and I very strongly recommend not doing this. As the title and synopsis suggest, this isn't a book for soothing anxiety but rather amplifies it.

I put the book down that night but picked it up a few weeks later, for reading at a more appropriate, less anxious hour, and I'm glad I did. It's actually quite a sweet story about someone who is quite depressed, a bit lost and lacks boundaries in a very big way.

It's one of the few books that I actually think might even be better as a film. I think that in the places where this story didn't quite manage to grab me, filmmakers might be able to expand on it.

i absolutely ADORED this book.

as a lesbian who suffers with anxiety, overthinking, and exists in a permanent state of existential crisis, i could relate so much to everything gilda was thinking and feeling.

i laughed, i cried, i snorted.

i implore every single one of my anxious and overthinking pals to read this, you will not regret it!

sadly A DNF for me, it was me not the book i am sure. I felt the pangs of loneliness and heartbreak throughout Austin's prose, and although there were moments of humour, the theme of grief ran a little too close to the surface for my own ability to continue reading.

This novel deals with a character who has extreme anxiety/depression - it may not be for someone who can sometimes feel like this themselves.

Took me a while to get used to the depressing outpouring onto the page, skipping from one time line to another, one subject to another. Without warning hurtle into the unknown. Gradually I began to read it at speed and that seemed to help with the randomness of the story.

Dead pan comedy it does have and I did laugh out loud a couple of times. But in the main it is a bit depressing to be honest. I did get to quite like Gilda especially when she went on a few dates with a man she was set up with out of kindness. Gilda being a lesbian meant it was never really going to work out for her especially as she was already seeing someone. Most of the comedy does come from Gilda being too nice or inept most of the time to actually say what she means, or tell the truth, leading her to be out of her depth in most situations.

I was hoping for more of a detective slant to the book from the book blurb.

Gilda is tormented by intrusive thoughts about death, about upsetting others, and questions the point of living. She is anxious constantly and is a regular 'customer' at A&E.

When she accidentally finds herself working as receptionist in a Catholic church, she feels like an imposter. After all, she is gay. And an atheist.

I really adored Gilda with all her foibles. Frequently darkly humorous, often deeply sad - this was a book written with great insight about the battles some of us silently endure on a daily basis. Gilda might even have ended her life, if she could have found the motivation/energy to do so.

Whilst there is a serious message about mental health, there is a message of hope also.

A brilliant and unusual read that I thoroughly enjoyed and often related to.

Gilda is a 28-year-old depressed atheist lesbian hypochondriac obsessed with death. But after getting fired from her job at a bookstore, she somehow ends up at a church. One case of mistaken identity later and she's the new administrative assistant to Jeff, the local priest. Between all the lies and subterfuge and family issues, Gilda's mental health slowly unravels. And then the police begins to suspect that Gilda's predecessor at the church might have been murdered.

I didn't really enjoy this book. It's so overwhelmingly depressing, with no escape. As a reader, you're simply stuck in the mind of a woman dealing with mental illness. But at the same time, there are some hilarious observations within all of the depressing stuff. And although the story takes some absurd twists and turns, I did end up finishing this book feeling a slight glimmer of hope somewhere in all the depressing moments.

This book completely surprised me. I wasn’t sure what to expect to be honest, but didn’t expect this.
The main character, Gilda, is a 27 year old queer woman riddled with anxiety and depression, when she starts working as a admin assistant at a Catholic Church, a job she kind of happens to take on by mistake.

The surprising thing about this novel is how accurately it depicts what it’s like to have anxiety and intrusive thoughts. Gilda’s thoughts almost perfectly mirrored my own when my anxiety was at its worst, so I could sense everything she felt and the dread she felt. The author did sn incredible job into showing what it’s like to feel anxious and depressed.

There was so much to love about this book: Gilda is one of the most interesting narrators I've encountered in a long time, and the way that Emily Austin portrays her slow unraveling is genuinely disturbing. I laughed out loud frequently on the train at the oddly dark humour, and I thought that the inclusion of Grace was a real masterclass in making a character seem completely believable and real, even though she only ever appeared in epistolary form. I did think that the book resolved itself much too quickly; it all comes to a head and comes good in about 5 pages at the end, which is a shame considering how well-paced the rest of it was. Still, a book I know I'll be thinking about for a long time.

Read this book. Gilda needs you to hear her story. Her voice is heartfelt, often hilarious and her story is a great insight into the complexities of mental health. It's a great book to discuss with others so if you enjoy reading with a buddy or book club, recommend this one.

I'm sure that this is a good book, but the editing for this ARC is so bad that I cannot bring myself to finish it. Other than that, it's kind of relatable - if the final book is properly edited I'm sure it will be solidly good.

Going by the title I was concerned this book would either be depressing or involve a lot of introspective naval-gazing. Luckily, neither was true.
The wry tone makes the main character's self-involved anxiety less irritating and more understandable than you would imagine.

The story is told from the point of view of Gilda, a pleasant young woman lacking in self-appreciation, slightly obsessing about the inevitability of death and convinced her self-worth relies on her making other people happy.

She has lost her job due to her inability to summon even enough energy to get out of bed and is running out of money to buy groceries when she decides to seek free therapy at the address on a flyer she is handed on the street. It turns out that the address is a church and instead of receiving therapy, she is offered a job.

For me the appeal of the book was due to the appeal of Gilda’s character. Although she is obviously failing to cope with life and her anxiety isolates her from the world and renders her unable to successfully communicate with anyone, she is kind and unselfish, concerned about her family and those around her, constantly putting the little energy she has into trying, if somewhat misguidedly, to protect the happiness of others.

Occasionally there are glimpses of hope and the tiniest amount of agency. She does seek out therapy, and somehow manages to keep up with the minimal demands of her job at the church. She buys groceries, plates to replace those she has broken, even a fire extinguisher to keep her home safe. And she makes an effort to visit her parents and maintain the relationship with her girlfriend. Gilda does not wallow in hopelessness. She is trying her best and just needs some help.

I understand a little about what Gilda is going through and felt this was a compassionate, non-melodramatic and realistic portrayal.

4.5 stars - recommended.

3.5 stars

I was very excited for this book, but unfortunately it missed the mark a little for me.
Our protagonist is Gilda, a 28 year old atheist who’s obsessed with death. She’s struggling with chronic anxiety and depression, and ends up in the ER so often she’s almost become a celebrity to the workers.

Gilda ends up as a receptionist at a Catholic church, with no qualifications, replacing an old woman who died a ‘mysterious’ death.

My main issue with this book is that Gilda is underdeveloped, and never really felt like a real person. There’s a little humour, but not as much as I thought there would be, and the ending lacked suspense.

That being said, I didn’t dislike this book, I just think my expectations were skewed by the description.

Loved it! Thanks so much :) Gilda loves animals, which I could completely relate to, and while she’s not perfect and has so much going on, she feels authentic and absolutely sympathetic because she has a heart of gold. The humor bits made me smile and laugh, even if dark at times. I found this portrayal an honest one, and while it may have been hard to read at times, it tackles some meaty issues surrounding mental health. I also loved the style of writing by the author. In the right hands, I think this is gem of a read, especially if you connect to characters like I did.

Everyone seems to be raving about this book recently and after reading I fully understand why. Gilda is a perfect narrator - moving, quite unhinged, vulnerable, incisive and relatable. She is forever preoccupied with the sheer difficulty of being alive, of being corporeal and real, of being observed by others and known, of being implicated in the inevitable timeline of life, in society and in relationships with people. Her obsessions - hypochondria, death - spin out of control in a way that mirrors perfectly the feeling of anxiety and panic, spiralling further and further and bringing the reader into this closed-off, dark space she occupies. As well as being disturbing and anxiety-inducing though, the book is tender, warm and extremely funny. Gilda's commentary on the world/people around her and her own self-confessed issues is humorous and smart, always reminding you that whilst life is terrifying, it is pretty funny too.

I quite enjoyed this book, however I can say undoubtedly it will be a polarizing book due to both the writing style and content.
Gilda is an interesting character, we can see from the beginning that her mental state is slowly causing her downfall as she struggles to maneuver relationships, sexuality, her job and strangely, a serial killer case. The writing style is definitely challenging, as it reads as one stream of consciousness that flits back and forward through time. She's not the most likeable character as she can be quite frustrating to read, which I think is showcased through Eleanor's view of Gilda. I thought her fascination with death was quite engrossing and I actually found I enjoyed this book more than I anticipated.