All These Things I've Done by Gabrielle Zevin

Pages: 354
Intended Audience: Teens and mature tweens
Genre: Dystopian; crime drama; romance
Notes for Parents: Contains mild language, references to violence and criminal behavior.

The Back Cover

I am Anya Balanchine.
I will be accused.
I will defend my honor.
I will be pursued.
I will be loved.
I will apologize.
I will be betrayed.

What the cover doesn’t tell you:

The vague cover description alludes to the story of Anya Balanchine, of the Balanchine crime family. With her parents both dead, she and her siblings are out of the family business of smuggling chocolate into the country (where caffeine and chocolate, among many things, are illegal). But can she really walk away that easily? Family obligations beckon, further complicated by her relationship with the son of the city’s new assistant district attorney. This is book one in the Birthright series.

What’s good?

Set in New York, in the year 2083, this is an interesting future where water is scarce, paper is rationed, and things like caffeine and chocolate are banned. Anya and her siblings are well-drawn, likeable characters and are surrounded by a multitude of interesting people, including Anya’s dying grandmother, her mafia kin, her school friends and teachers, the new ADA, and the evil head of Liberty’s Children’s Facility.
Best Part: Coffee speakeasies!

What isn’t good?

The story had some great moments where I felt things started to pick up, but ultimately, nothing was sustained. It got interesting when there was a near-death by chocolate, but that quickly fizzled and Anya’s incarceration had promise, but that too led nowhere. Even Anya’s romance with Win warms up only to die down before anything really exciting happens.
Worst part: Catholicism was a sad ploy to establish Anya’s character. Like everything else, its part in the story was, in the end, pointless.

Recommendation þþooo

This was a dystopian novel that lacked world building, a crime drama that lacked suspense, and a romance that lacked, well, romance. I really enjoyed the characters and felt the potential for a good story was just around the corner, but ultimately, I remained unrewarded. Perhaps the author (whose book Elsewhere is among my top ten of all time) saved the good stuff for subsequent books in the series. Sadly, this was just a disappointment for me. I gave it two checkmarks in hopes that the overall series is better than book one.

Zevin, Gabrielle. All These Things I’ve Done. New York: Square Fish, 2011.