This was highly enjoyable – a reimagining of the famous musketeers in an alternate Paris and with a main character with a disability, this was such a good romp. From heists and spying missions, to extracting information at fancy balls and trying to foil a plot of hurt the king, it had all the typical features of a dashing musketeer tale. It’s refreshing to have some disability rep, especially in a character that still is amazing at fencing despite her challenges. The reveal of the mystery itself was slightly obvious but not to the point where it stopped me from enjoying the book.

The gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers of my dreams. Thank you for the early copy to review.

One for all is one of the rare YA books I have read this year, but I loved every second. Many Thanks to NetGalley and Titan Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

So the story is a gender bent retelling of the three-musketeers and is an astounding piece of work for how much has been put into it to make it unique. From a very beautifully written chronic illness representation that it’s obvious the writer was passionate about portraying realistically with no holds barred to the beautiful messages surrounding found family in the midst of uncertainty and high stake action. The writing style is absolutely gorgeous and the pacing was fantastic.

The characters, I cannot describe how much I loved each and every one of them, and the individuality and issues each one was seen to have and how it was framed/represented is by far the standout. Each person got their chance to shine, and also develop and not always in the way you think and it’s great.

I genuinely am so shocked this was not all over book social media more at the time of release, my main regret being I didn’t get round to reading it as soon as I wanted.

Oof, it took me a long time to finish this one.

I will say, I liked the representation of POTS in this book. It was good to see Tania struggle with it but learn how to manage it and lean on others when needed.

Unfortunately, I didn't like the actual plot. I just generally found it boring, which is why it took me so long to get through it. Also the random insertion of french was strange as surely they were always speaking French? And one of my main issues is that I didn't feel much for the other girls, the only other character I truly liked was her father.

I give this 2.5 stars rounded up to 3. Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Actual rating: 4.5/5, rounded up

I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting when I picked up One for All, but a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers sounded like something I would enjoy, and I was entirely right in that!

This book had everything I could have wanted: spies and court intrigue, balls and swordfights, a school that isn't at all what it seems, and a delightful found family. The story starts off a bit slow as we're introduced to Tania and her struggles to live a normal life. She suffers from a condition that causes her to have frequent dizzy spells and fainting, which we know to be POTS but in 17th-century France causes her to be dismissed as a "sick girl" who'll never amount to anything. That is, from everyone except her father. Tania's relationship with her father was beautiful, and the way he always believed in her and pushed her to defy other people's expectations and labels was heartwarming. Until he was murdered.

The pace picks up when Tania arrives in Paris to join a mysterious finishing school as her father's last wish. Between training, fencing, learning high-society etiquette and uncovering a potential assassination plot, Tania will need to learn whom to trust: her newfound sisters-in-arms or the charming Étienne?

I loved the way the author handled this work compared to the original. Unlike some other retellings, this isn't a scene-by-scene replay of the original with female characters. Rather, she took the essence of the story and weaved something new and original from it, so much so that at times I felt as though this could almost be a companion novel to The Three Musketeers rather than simply a retelling. I also liked the inclusion of French words and phrases throughout the novel, as it helped to bring the setting to life for me, although sometimes there were a few needless repetitions in translation.

Reading about this time period was also very interesting, as I realised I knew hardly anything about La Fronde and the following years (as always, thank you Wikipedia for helping me fill in the gaps!), and I love a book that pushes me to do some research and learn something new! The plot was captivating enough, although I had guessed most of the surprises (as many avid, adult readers will probably also do), but it does a good job for a YA novel and a debut at that.

The representation in this was also a major plus point for me. The book is OwnVoices, as the author herself shares Tania's chronic health problems and is a fencer. This was really cool and shown through the writing, making it all feel more authentic. As a former fencer myself, I particularly loved those scenes and how real they felt. Alongside the disability rep, there are also discussions on women's rights and social expectations, as well as a lovely LGBT rep. This last one I particularly appreciated because it was handled so delicately and not used as a conflict point. There was also a bit of social commentary, with references being made to the poorest and most marginalised in society, and how they are often exploited and used as scapegoats by the higher classes - again, one of my favourite themes (as you may have gathered if you're a regular around here!).

The dynamics between the characters were probably my favourite thing. I adore the found family trope, and this was one of the best I read recently. Every interaction between Tania and her newfound sisters Portia, Théa and Aria was an absolute joy, and I loved every moment spent together. The individual character development wasn't quite as strong for me. This is a YA novel and the characters mostly act their age, which I'm fine with, but it felt as though there was something missing in their characterisation and growth. Tania especially was a little bit of a disappointment in this sense: I loved the fact that she grew more confident as the novel progressed, but she seemed to continue to lack common sense and maturity by the end.

I accompanied this with the audiobook, which is narrated by Mara Wilson (forever Matilda in my mind). She does a wonderful job of it, both with the English and the French lines. Definitely worth it if you like audiobooks.

Overall, this was an extremely pleasant read, expertly mixing adventure with a number of social issues and some great representation. I had a few minor issues with it, but they didn't take much away from my enjoyment of this book and are very likely things that will be ironed out in future works. If this is Lainoff's debut, I'm really curious to see what she'll write next!

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Titan Books for giving me access to an e-arc copy of this book!

This was a debut novel for author Lillie Lainoff and I can’t wait to read what she writes next.

In most basic terms this book was a feminine retelling of The Three Musketeers. However, the main heroine suffers from a chronic illness (POTS) yet follows her dreams to become a fencer and follow in her fathers footsteps.

This book started out quite slow for me and took me a while to really get into it, but once I did I could not put this down! A secret sisterhood learning to sword fight and kick ass even though society tell them they can’t?? I’m in. I loved the support and love she finds from her musketeers, both physically and mentally and how she learns to love herself and how her illness won’t hold her back as much as she thought it would. As someone who had never heard of POTS before, the author did an amazing job of showing how the illness can affect their everyday life even on a better health day. Tania's symptoms were constantly talked about about and not just used
for dramatic effect or when convenient.

The ending was a bit predictable, but I loved the mystery and drama behind trying to find out the people behind an assassination plot. Overall, a great historical, gender-bend musketeers retelling with fantastic chronic illness representation. I would highly recommend!

This was a wonderful YA read that I can recommend to anyone that likes books about sisterhood and making your own way in the world, The characters are lovable, the writing is fluent and engaging and the rep fantastic.
It wrapped me up in it's mysteries right from the beginning and Tania was a great protagonist to follow. I have a few gripes with it, mainly that I didn't like the twist at the end (but that is a personal preference and not the books fault) and that the evil plot was a little silly at times but I still give this book solid 4 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for this honest review.

I don’t have much to say about this book, other than I loved the concept, but found nothing special about the execution. I enjoyed the representation in this, but the plot and writing was mostly so mediocre that I found myself bored with it very early on.

(Feminist musketeers... colour me intrigued.)

Tania has been sick her whole life, but her father- a retired musketeer - will not allow her to let that stop her being a skilled fencer.

When tragedy strikes, Tania moves into a finishing school, of sorts... which holds more secrets than she expected at first.

Tania finds so much there with the other girls that she never had back in her home town. A band of fierce women who encourage and hold each other up, if needs be.

The girls must work together to attempt to thwart a mysterious assassination plot all whilst learning where they belong and who to trust... can they do what needs to be done...

One For All is a feminist story inspired by the Musketeers, gender-bending the role, written by Lillie Lainoff. Situated in 17th century France, we are going to be following the story of Tania de Batz, daughter of an ex-musketeer; and how after the murder of her father, she ends up joining a secret sisterhood to train as a musketeer and uncovering the threats against king's life; all of this while dealing with her chronic illness.

And let's stop a moment to talk about Tania, because it's a really uncommon main character, and honestly, wish there would be more representation in fantasy. Tania suffers from PTOS, a chronic illness that has affected her since being really young; as you can imagine, this condition in the historical period we are reading, it comes with an added layer of difficulties for the person suffering it. Lainoff's portrait of how a chronic condition affects you and puts extra weight on you is really accurate; how at some point it is also messing with your mental strength, especially when the people around you seem to not comprehend it.
Tania's dream has always been to become as strong and independent as her father, becoming a great fencer and maybe a musketeer, so she trains hard in order to get it; this wish can be fulfilled with the last wish of her father, sending her to L’Académie des Mariées, where she gets inducted into a sisterhood, where she will train as a new type of musketeer, in the company of three other girls. Those girls would become a big support for her, an important part of her life, her sisters.
Her mentor, Madame de Treville, is the kind of character that acts as the perfect mix between a protective figure and one that will push our musketeers to their limit, all in order to prepare them to be able to self-defense and to act as spies infiltrated among the nobles.

All of this comes with a big mystery attached, as this sisterhood of musketeers has a mission to protect the king from an assassination tentative; meanwhile, Tania also expects to see if she can throw some light on her father's assassination. This will take us to the Paris of the 17th century, with its nobles' parties and soirees, where our musketeers will try to get more information in order to fulfill their labour.

The pacing was kinda in the spot, but I felt it could have been faster at some times, especially in the initial section of the book; but once Tania moves to Paris it becomes really adequate, and the story is really engaging. I should also mention that I'm not a fan of mixing French words into the narration, as it broke my immersion sometimes.

Said that, One For All is a really brave proposal, with an excellent representation of how it is living with a chronic condition. If you like historically inspired novels, and you like stories about friendship and braveness, you should definitely pick this book.

Tania de Batz is the daughter of a Musketeer. Trained by her father, she is more than comfortable with a sword. But everyone else thinks she is weak because of her illness. Tania’s dizzy spells are near-constant, but her papà believes in her.

But then Papa is murdered. His last wish was to send Tania to an illustrious finishing school that is not all that it appears to be - this is no finishing school, it is a training ground for new, female, musketeers!

Pals, I had SUCH a wonderful time with this. Let’s get to what I loved:

🗡️Tania is not to be trifled with. She has overcome so much, and she is still being moulded as a person when we meet her. This was as much a coming of age as it was acceptance of self.
🗡️ The independent female in 17th century France was hard to pull off here, but Lainoff works it in so well within the constraints of 17c society!
🗡️ The other Musketeers. Such wonderfully different personalities at play!
🗡️ The back and forth between English and French was not at all confusing and done so in a manner that even if you speak no French (like me!) you still know what’s being said without direct translation - wonderful!
🗡️ ‘I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this’ from Disney’s Hercules honestly springs to mind immediately when I think of this book. So apt!
🗡️The chronic illness rep: Tania suffers from POTS (Postural tachycardia syndrome), although Tania has no formal diagnosis for an illness that had no name back in the 17th century! I found this super insightful and refreshing to see this kind of rep in an action packed novel!

Loved it

A fun spin off of the Three Musketeers. I would argue that this is not a ‘feminist retelling’ since it a) is just women with swords – not automatically feminist: female inclusive perhaps? And b) borrows themes from the classic but doesn’t attempt to retell it. However if you’re look for a light, fun read with plenty of action and girls doing swordplay, you’ll probably really enjoy this.

This is a sweet and fun retelling of The Three Musketeers as a female-led YA story. I thought the POTS rep was well-done, though it's perhaps a little repetitive in its early explanations for those already familiar with the condition, and Tania is a likeably determined heroine. I personally found the story and tone as a whole a little bit young for me, but as I'm ageing out of YA that's to be expected - for the target audience, this is a great adventure!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book.

This was so good! When I first heard about this book, I was immediately excited. In all fairness, I don't know a lot about the Musketeers other than the basics, but a gender bent retelling sounded like a great time to me and it did not disappoint!

The setting, the plot and the writing were all great, I was intrigued the entire time. I also thought that it was paced very well.
I didn't know much about POTS before, but personally I found the representation of it interesting and done really well, and after reading some reviews by readers who also have POTS, I'm really glad that a lot of them seem to agree. Disability and chronic and mental illness rep are so important to have in books, and to see characters still slay is such a beautiful thing.

I did struggle a bit with the main character at times, I love YA but sometimes I can't help but get frustrated with the characters. Tania was okay for the most part, but I wish there had been a bit more character development. I also didn't care too much about the romance.

Overall, I had a good time with the book and definitely recommend it.

So I love The Three Musketeers. It's my favourite book of all time. There was always going to be a danger that I wouldn't like this book for that reason. It was ok. Not lifechanging but ok. I liked some aspects of it, like the found family aspect and I did enjoy the MC. However, I couldn't give it more than my rating because it felt like something was missing.

A swashbuckling, action packed, heart pounding adventure filled with strong women and fencing with the best Own Voices representation in recent years.

Lillie Lainoff's debut novel "One for All" has all the things one could want from a fun, historical ya: musketeers, strong women, pretty scenery and both wlw and disability rep. Sounds awesome, so I was actually excited to read this. Especially considering this is an ownvoices novel, with our protagonist Tania suffering from the same chronic illness the author does, and one I honestly haven't heard of before. This is also were the story shines, while in mostly every other regard it turned out to be kind of mediocre.

The writing is approachable and it's a quick read, there are no pacing issues, it's a well enough crafted novel. The one thing I can criticize about the writing is probably one of my biggest pet peeves ever: This story takes place in France, so naturally, the characters speak French. The novel is written in English though, so naturally, the language on paper is English. Now, randomly throwing in French words in dialogue just to make sure your readers really know that these characters are FRENCH!!! is the most annoying writing choice, and it doesn't make sense either. If the characters suddenly switch to French, what language have they been speaking before? Well, certainly not French. I hate this in every novel, and Lainoff does it constantly. It doesn't have the effect these authors think it does, on the contrary.

The characters are sadly rather flat, too. I couldn't tell you much about any of them other than some surface information, and the author doesn't do much with the actually really interesting background stories of some of them. Our heroine Tania is, sadly, mostly reduced to her being sick, which, as much as I liked the rep, doesn't do her justice. It also sometimes feels kind of painted on, because Tania actually, in the end, manages everything rather perfectly and the illness mostly serves to make other characters feel for her, but I won't really criticize that because I do not suffer from this illness myself. There's also a romantic subplot going on that is just not very engaging, so I didn't care for it. I was much more interested in the (superior and better written) romance between two of Tania's friends.

The plot could have been interesting, but somehow I just... felt bored most of the time. I was never really excited about any of it, the twists were really obvious and I didn't really care about what happened to the characters. Maybe it was also just a case of "reader not fitting the read", but I usually love Musketeer novels and this one just wasn't it.

I can see why many will like this, and I applaud the book for the things it does right. I wish it all the luck and all the readers and hope that more authors choose to make invisible chronic illnesses visible on page with the same dedication Lainoff does. But for me, this was mostly a forgettable read.
2.5 stars

Tania is the daughter of a former musketeer. Her childhood spent fencing with her father and hearing all about his adventures has led to her wanting nothing more than to follow in his footsteps. Following her father’s mysterious death, Tania is sent to a finishing school in Paris, only to learn that this school is secretly a training ground for young girls to become musketeers themselves.

The most important relationships in this book is the friendship Tania builds with the other girls at the school. Théa, Portia, and Aria all welcome Tania into their group right from the start and their friendship was really lovely to read about. They’re all fiercely supportive of each other and love each other deeply, and they celebrate each other’s successes rather than constantly trying to be better than each other. Being a musketeer means working well as a team, which isn’t a problem here. You could definitely use the term ‘found family’ to describe these four.

The romance element of this book is a more minor plot point than the relationships between the girls. I wasn’t a huge fan of it for a lot of the book, and there’s a particular incident that I found frustrating due to how blown out of proportion everything got. However, I did like the eventual direction that this romance went in. I thought it was interesting, and something that you don’t see all that often. I would suggest that you don’t go into this expecting a capital R Romance because if you do then you’re going to be disappointed.

Tania’s POTS affects nearly everything she does, and so it’s naturally almost always on her mind. At the start of the book she’s surrounded by people in her hometown who think that because Tania is disabled she must be weak and not worth spending their time on, which of course isn’t true, but ableism like this is something that real disabled people unfortunately face every day. As the book goes on Tania starts to receive the support and accommodations she needs, and with this support Tania is able to thrive and achieve the things she’s always wanted to be able to do. I hope that this book can pave the way for even more depictions of characters with POTS and other chronic conditions going forwards.

In all, I had a good time reading this one. If anything about the book’s description has caught your attention then I’d recommend picking this one up!

With generic characters and poor writing, ONE FOR ALL is as dull as a rusty sword.

I read until 70% then flicked through the rest. I don't know how anyone can make "genderbent Musketeers operate secret female sect in historical France" boring, but somehow ONE FOR ALL manages it.

The beginning starts strong: in her small village in historical France, Tania has dreams bigger than herself. When her Musketeer father dies, she travels to Paris to join a finishing school for girls, hoping to find answers for his death – only to discover the school is a secret operation of woman-only Musketeers.

When she gets to the school and integrates with the other girls, is where this book takes an unfortunate dip. The story is so dry and uncompelling, and even reading to 70% I couldn't tell you half of what happens because it all blends unhelpfully together. There are balls, sword fights, city-wide chases, secret sleuthing missions, and yet there is no charm or excitement in its execution. A plot to assassinate the king is introduced, and even that fails to induce any sort of intrigue, which by its very nature should be easy.

The writing was another weakness of this book: it lacked rhythm and coherence – sometimes I just didn't know what was going on. This is especially damaging during the sword fights. With Tania, the supporting cast felt a little too rote to feel like real people to me: Portia is the headstrong one, Aria the quiet one, Théa the bubbly one. They take to Tania like she's been there all along – there is very little adjustment period between them. There are odd narrative choices for their stories as well.

The romance and ending were predictable as well, and it felt like the book was going to culminate in more than a 'my disability doesn't stop me from being great' sort of message, but it played it as true as a fiddle. This wasn't to my personal cup of tea, but I hope it will have a more powerful effect for disabled readers, especially readers who have POTS.

ONE FOR ALL was disappointing in its amateur execution, but I thought the disabled rep was great, and I know that marginalised folks haven't historically had the chance to have their own cliché adventure stories. Well, ONE FOR ALL is it, and I hope there are people who will enjoy this more than I did. This would definitely suit a younger teen audience.

WILL I READ MORE BY THIS AUTHOR? Not for a few books at least.

Never underestimate the power of representation, of being able to see some like yourself worthy of being the main character, of being able to save the day. One for all is a retelling of Dumas famous The Three Musketeers and it truly does live up to the original, whilst still making the plot it’s own. I have POTs, which is the condition that Tania - the main character also has. Lainoff has captured so well the frustration and helpless that comes in waves. The fear of simple tasks where dizzying blackness can take you any time, as well as the frustration at being assumed useless. Tanias POTs is never fixed, there’s so magic to take it away, no hidden cure. She struggles with it whilst she duels masked men and saving the country - and that’s what I love the most, what’s so real, chronic disabilities don’t just go away. You have good days and bad days.

Don’t mistake my rambling about POTs as a show that this book is only about a disability, and it’s own voice representation is the only thing holding it up. This book combines a morally grey found family with regency balls, beautiful gowns with knives, heists and mystery. I was in the midst of this book when I received some scary health news and having the strength of Tania and the Mousquetaires de la Lune at my fingertips gave me so much strength. I have saved so many quotes as well so I’ll be sharing those soon ✨