I feel like I should have enjoyed this book a lot more than I did. I think it wasn’t the right time for me to read this, and maybe at another time I would have felt more for Gilda, other than just frustration. I didn’t dislike the story, and actually did laugh out loud a few times, and related to so many areas, but I just couldn’t get invested in the narrative or in the characters.

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is the story of Gilda, a woman in her late 20’s who suffers from severe anxiety, so much so that it really restricts her in her ability to keep a job, focus, maintain relationships, and just move forward in her life. This anxiety is also paired with depression and the feeling that everything and everyone is going to fall/die at any given time (which leads her to also be pretty hypochondriac too). Gilda halfheartedly goes to join a therapy group in a local church but ends up working for the church because she doesn’t correct them when they think that she is there for the receptionist job. She starts to live this life where she becomes one person who she thinks she has to be at work, another self who she thinks she needs to be with her girlfriend/around others, and yet again her other self when she is alone. 

The thing is, Gilda is at times funny and heartwarming, and you want to hug her, and it annoyed me that I couldn’t get invested in the book. I think it’s because having spent most of my life battling my own anxiety (and parts of it battling my own depression), I just didn’t have the energy to stay inside Gilda’s head, and the entire narrative is literally what goes on in Gilda’s head.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.