Published By: Orion
Pages: 336
Released On: 05/11/2026
Nothing ever happened to her. And then everything did.
Esme Good is an unremarkable young woman working a dull job in a city much like the one you’re picturing now.
Her only escape is The Elsewheres: tiny potions which allow her to visit alternate versions of herself. Sadly, these only confirm her suspicion that she is, in a cosmic sense, living her worst life.
But, after an incident we simply don’t have time to get into right now, she will become the most important person in this – or perhaps any – universe.
As you can imagine, this is a lot of pressure. And she’s not going to handle it well.
Esme has never been a main character. Now, a lot of things are about to happen to her: in fact, everything, and so much.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Orion for the advanced reader copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I have read two of Andrew’s books before – A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering and the sequel Bad Deeds – and I own The Sanctuary.
This was very odd. I couldn’t figure out who was meant to be narrating it to us, and I couldn’t decide if it was second person or third. I felt like a weird place between it.
Esme isn’t a particularly likeable character. No, that’s not entirely true. She’s not likeable but nor is she unlikeable. She’s just sort of, there. She didn’t give me anything to really grab hold of. But I wonder if that was the intention, making her fairly boring and normal and everyday.
I don’t generally get on with footnotes. When used well, they really add something, but I don’t find they are used well normally, and I didn’t really get their role in this. I read some but skipped others and never felt out of the loop.
It reminded me slightly of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s… universe. And – sorry fandom – I really didn’t get that too. I couldn’t figure out what this was trying to be. Was it trying to be clever, funny, scary, fun, adventurous, thought-provoking? It was trying to be too much at once whilst failing to hit any of the marks. I was confused by it for the majority of time I spent reading it. I didn’t understand some of it and some parts were so self-consciously whacky that you are more focussed on how weird it is than the story itself.
Reviews said it was a funny, life-affirming story. I didn’t get that. Overall it was a pleasant book to read and it was quick. It’s an utterly bizarre, mad, crazy story, but I didn’t find it funny and I can’t say my life felt affirmed.
Having taken all those negative points into account, I did enjoy it more as I went along. The first 20% or so was lost on me. And that’s a risky thing, because usually I give a book 20% before I decide if I will DNF it, so this was close. But once the more supernatural elements started to appear, it got more interesting and I wanted to know what happened at the end. Whilst it wasn’t perfect, even by the end, it had become a fun, whacky, enjoyable read.
