When Emma and Ben get pregnant with their first child, they decide it’s time to move out of New York City to somewhere safer and more peaceful. And when Ben, a Broadway producer, finds a big country house that has an actual theater inside it, he knows he’s found the place for them.
Emma isn’t quite as sure at first. The house is nice, but it needs a lot of work. It’s pretty remote. And it has a storied history. It used to be owned by a doctor and his wife who ran a home for alcoholic Broadway actors to dry out. They had the theater so that their patients could still put on shows. The heirs to the doctor and his wife let the place fall to disrepair, and now Ben wants to buy it and fix it up.
When Emma finally sees the house, she is pleasantly surprised. It does need a lot of work, but it also has a lot of potential. It’s beautiful, it has good bones, and Emma really likes the idea of raising children there. And in the kitchen is a beautiful antique stove like she’s always wanted. They sign the papers and hire a contractor, JD.
Ben has to go back to the city to work on a new project, but he promises that he will always have his phone ready to take her call, if she needs anything at all. And JD makes sure that she has several rooms that she can live in, and he’s especially thoughtful towards her pregnancy whenever he’s working with something dangerous or toxic. But the more time Emma spends there, the more she finds things that she’s not entirely comfortable with.
She finds a young woman’s journal in the attic and starts reading it. The woman had been pregnant, the lover of a married A-list actor, and she had been sent out there to have the baby. The doctor and his wife were supposed to help her have the baby and find a good couple to adopt it, but the way the journal ends, Emma worries that the woman’s story doesn’t end well. As she looks out at the fields, she sees a young woman with a baby. But with the house as remote as it is, it’s unlikely that there is anyone out in the fields around the house. So what did she see? Was is a ghost? A hallucination? And when Emma walks out back to try to find the place where she saw the woman, she realizes that she’s in a graveyard. What could it all mean?
As the weeks go by, Ben spends more time in the city on his new Broadway project, Peter Pan and the Lost Girls, and Emma has more trouble getting ahold of him. But JD is around. He’s handsome and thoughtful, and Emma finds herself attracted to him. But she would never cheat on Ben. Even though she is starting to suspect that he’s cheating on her. At least, it feels like something is off. Maybe Emma is just feeling lonely, but things aren’t the same with Ben. Maybe it will be better when the baby is born.
They do have a lovely Thanksgiving dinner at the house, with a few couples they know from the city. And Ben agrees to let the town put on their annual Christmas pageant in their theater. He even agrees to direct it for them. But despite the good memories, Emma can’t help but feel like something strange is going on. She can’t find any friends in this new town. There are odd coincidences all around her. She feels like Ben is gaslighting her, but she doesn’t have any proof. And while the baby seems healthy, Emma wonders if she’s losing her mind. Is there something going on with the house, or is she just slowly losing it?
All I Want is the latest thriller from author Darcey Bell, whose A Simple Favor went on to be a popular movie. This novel is a head-spinning tangle of suspicions and confusions, of lies and secrets, that keep the story moving in many directions at once.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was not a fan of Bell’s writing style, as it seemed to be a little heavy-handed. One of the first piece of writing advice I heard back in the day was to show, not tell, and this has a lot of telling. Maybe she thought that it fit well with the story, but for me, it took me out of the story and kept me at arm’s length from the characters. I could empathize with them some, but I couldn’t get any closer than that. And I won’t say much about the ending except that I was disappointed. There are a lot of good things about All I Want, especially the creepy house where so much of the story takes place, so I won’t say to skip it. But realize that this is a complicated novel with some lows as well as some highs.
Egalleys for All I Want were provided by Atria Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.
