Book Review: All These Things I've Done

Title: All These Things I've Done
Author: Gabrielle Zevin
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Rating: 5

Synopsis (via Goodreads): In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family. Engrossing and suspenseful, All These Things I've Done is an utterly unique, unputdownable read that blends both the familiar and the fantastic.

Review: I asked for All These Things I've Done for Christmas after participating in a live chat with the author, Gabrielle Zevin. I obviously got it as a gift and it had been on my shelf ever since. Let's just say, I'm glad I chose this one to read in the Back to School Read-a-Thon.

I didn't really know what to expect or what would happen in this book when I first started to read it. All I basically knew about it was that chocolate was illegal and paper was scarce. These two things seemed crazy to me and I really wanted to know how the main character, Anya, survived with her world being different from the world we live in today. Lately, I've been reading a lot of books whose characters live in completely different circumstances than we do. For example, The Hunger Games, Matched, Shatter Me and now All These Things I've Done.

Anya Balanchine has a lot of things on her plate. Being only a teenager, she has to care for her older brother with medical issues, her younger sister, and dying Nana. Things get more complicated for the daughter of a now deceased crime boss when her ex- boyfriend is poisoned and the blame is put on her.

Throughout this book, there were a lot of twists and turns which meant that I couldn't put it down. In the end, I can't wait for the sequel. I mean, who can wait for sequels? Crazy people in my opinion. =)