Book Review
Title: The Epic Story of Every Living Thing by Deb Caletti
Genre: Contemporary, Family, Drama
Rating: 3.75 Stars
The opening to The Epic Story of Every Living Thing was interesting and while it wasn’t that exited I was drawn into the story. We are introduced to Harper who is your average self-conscious, anxious teenager obsessed with the way she looks and how others see her but there is something different that sets Harper apart and that is she is a speed donor baby who wants to know who her father is. Harper throughout her life has found a few others that look just like her and she knows they must be at least half-siblings but she doesn’t contact them, only keeps an eye on their social media profiles. Harper does well in school and has an amazing boyfriend in Ezra but I feel that she doesn’t appreciate him enough as she is constantly worrying about 100 different things and I can’t wait to see where this goes.
As we approach the 1/4 mark in the novel, I was really disliking Harper as a main character as she uses her anxiety as an excuse to treat people horribly and make herself feel better which isn’t nice at all. The first part of this is how she uses Ezra to make herself feel better even when he is showing off his prom outfit all she can think about is getting pictures of him to post on Instagram so her followers will tell her how lucky she is so she can actually feel that way. We can see how it affect Ezra and Harper is aware of it and does it anyway even though she knows he doesn’t like it. This is further shown when she contacts Dario, her half-brother and she treats him so badly. In their first conversation he lets slip that there are over 40 children from this speed donor and Harper is so overwhelmed that she hangs up which I understand but then she ignores him for days even though he is concerned about her. Then when she realises that Dario has met Simone she tears into him like he didn’t have the right to contact her even though she is also his half-sister. The only good thing to come out of this is that Harper and Dario meet for the first time and Harper understands how lonely she has been and Dario also has a picture of their father and his name, Beau Zane. However, everything up to this point has felt like a massive prologue meaning the pace is slow and I was more than a little bored.
As we cross the 1/4 mark in the novel, I was struggling to cope with Harper as a main character as she is so unlikeable to the point where she comes across as an asshole. She is constantly cutting off Dario and hurting him and even though she is aware of it she doesn’t fee, bad about it blaming her anxiety and distress rather than owning up to her appalling behaviour. This is shown even more when Ezra finally dumps her after on of her photo expeditions and I completely agree with him, for the entirety of their relationship we have seen Harper treated him more like an assistant than a boyfriend always wanting him to drive her somewhere or carry her equipment and then have the audacity to say she doesn’t know why he dumped her after she reveals that she has known about her siblings and father for several months and not even brought it up to him. She didn’t even have to tell him everything all she had to say was she was looking to track down her father and he would have supported her but she has hidden from him and lied to him repeatedly over the past few months so I can’t feel any sympathy for her when she is being a bad person and hiding behind her anxiety and insecurities as excuses for this behaviour. Dario, Wyatt and Simone have tracked down their father and learnt he is dive instructor which is why he moves around a lot and they want to go track him down since Wyatt’s family has a summer home near where they think he is currently staying but I have a feeling that Harper isn’t going to be on board and she is going to make the other feel bad for wanting to find him.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, the four children end up deciding to travel to Hawaii and after her breakup it is an impulsive decision on Harper’s part. Even telling her mother turned into a fight because of Harper and she didn’t even stop and consider that her feelings weren’t the only ones that mattered during this situation and when her mother asks for her to tell Beau nothing about does it finally click. The journey to Hawaii is nerve racking for most of them and they decide to spy on Beau’s house which results in some major bonding moments for these siblings. The next day they decide to go to the dive shack and introduce he selves to Beau if he is there which he obviously is and he is just as shocked and anxious as they are. This first meeting wasn’t all hugs and smiles but it’s wasn’t rejection either, I think that Beau genuinely blocked out the possibility that he might have kids somewhere out in the world and these four children in front of him all built him up in their minds and were a little disappointed when he didn’t meet those expectations but there is still a lot of hope in them that they might be able to form a bond with him the way they have done with each other. I really don’t get the significance of the ancient diary entries at the beginning of each chapter as they feel like they are telling an entirely different story and I am finding it a little distracting to be honest.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, there are some bumps in the beginning of the relationship between a father and his children which was nice to see that everything wasn’t immediately going to be perfect. Beau despite not being the marrying type wanted children of his own and decide to become a sperm donor to give something selfless to women that wanted children but couldn’t and he hoped that one day someone might come looking for him and he got four instead of one with many more out there. The initial couple of interaction between them all are messy and uncoordinated with hope and disappointment and possibly love all hanging the balance but they really begin to bond when Beau teaches them to dive, sharing something personal with them since it has been in his blood for generations. He also shares the impending disaster that will envelope his home since the navy wanted to detonate many unexplored bombs in the area regardless of how much wildlife it is going to kill and the old shipwreck it is going to destroy. The ship will be the hardest loss for Beau’s family since his father Tony was obsessed with learning the identity of the ship since he believed it to be Neptune’s Car.
As we approach the 3/4 mark in the novel, the ship is important since it links those opening segments of each chapter to the current story but it also gives the children a more concrete link to their father and his family and they decide they should dive on it. Being away from her phone since it drops into the ocean Harper has come to appreciate living in the moment and this gives her the opportunity to reconnect with Ezra who she hasn’t really spoken to since the breakup and really see him for who he is. She ends up apologising for her behaviour before now she sees how wrong it was. There is some sadness since they learn that their grandfather Tony died due to pandemic and his wife and son weren’t allowed to be with him during that time and they are going to lose a massive link to him when the bombs are set off and Harper wants to do something about it. I can’t wait to see them all five together and see where their relationship goes but I hope that Harper might be able to use some of the following she gained on social media to help with the current situation and maybe make a real life difference something she has never done before without worrying about all the ramifications and consequences. With less than a hundred pages left I was excited to see how Canetti was going to bring the novel to an end but I also didn’t really want it to end. Seeing the love, joy and heartbreak all these character share was infectious and despite not really liking Harper at first she really grew on me as the novel progressed.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, we see everything come together. While there isn’t much in terms of plot since the novel is mainly focused on the characters, their relationships and development it was nice to see a little action towards the end. Overall, I ended up liking this book despite hating Harper for the first half since she changes a lot in the second half as do the other characters. My favourite character by far was Beau and he was just a ,liveable, warm characters with realistic flaws but loved all his children, all 42 of them. Honestly I’ve never been a fan of contemporary books but these types of book are growing on me the older I get.
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