I’m torn about this one. While I appreciated its exploration of faith, sexuality, and gender in the isolated, restrictive world of 18th-century frontier America, it didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped.

Set against the backdrop of The Great Awakening, the novel thoughtfully delves into what it might have been like to grapple with nonconforming desires far from urban centers where kindred spirits might exist. The characters—young and old, male and female—navigate deeply personal struggles to reconcile theology, societal norms, and their own yearnings. The author excels at capturing the claustrophobia and spiritual peril of the time, making the setting vividly real.

While I was engaged and cared for the characters, some of their actions felt inconsistent with their small, tightly knit community, and the story didn’t resonate as deeply as I’d hoped. Still, it’s a thoughtful and atmospheric read.

This keeps the key points and insights while streamlining the flow and trimming excess. How does that feel?

This book was different to what I normally reach for and it was an interesting read but I did find it a little hard to connect to the story and I wasn't moved it the way I expected to be.

This was an interesting read, but I was left wanting more between the two main lovers, more of an exploration. The fallout across both families was good though.

You know when you read a book then you leave off reviewing it for a month or so and suddenly you can’t remember a thing about it? That’s how memorable All the World Beside was to me. It was perfectly alright a read, but nothing really stuck out about it, apart from the fact that, while it centred on a supposedly perspective-altering relationship, you never really saw that. Which was probably the point, but if it has all these big consequences that spiral out of it, then perhaps it ought to be a little more on page? Maybe that’s just me. Anyway: a good read, but not a great one, ultimately.