Emily Austin

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

This hilarious and profound debut for fans of Mostly Dead Things and Goodbye, Vitamin, follows a morbidly anxious young woman—“the kindhearted heroine we all need right now” (Courtney Maum, New York Times bestselling author)—who stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and becomes obsessed with her predecessor’s mysterious death. Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend. She can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman, who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence. A delightful blend of warmth, deadpan humor, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration—and the expiration of those you love—is the only certainty.

A Novel

Larissa Campos

“It works like a feedback loop. What we think affects how we feel and act. If I feel bad because I think I’m not a good friend, for example, I might avoid people, which will then make me feel worse. If, instead of avoiding people, I visit a friend, that behavior will affect my thoughts about how good a friend I am, which will in turn affect my feelings and my behavior in the future.”

Every moment exists in perpetuity regardless of whether it’s remembered. What has happened has happened; it occupies that moment in time forever. You blaze through moments all your life, forgetting things, and becoming ages older, until you forget everything.

Eleanor redirects my hand whenever it goes anywhere near her stomach. She’s never told me explicitly not to touch her stomach, but I recognize that she doesn’t want me to by how she grips my hand and moves it to her hip or her rib cage. She’s thinner than I am, but that doesn’t seem to matter. She thinks something is wrong with her stomach. “I like your stomach,” I tell her, thinking I’m subtle. “Fuck off,” she replies, laughing. It’s strange people don’t like how their bodies look. It’s strange we waste any of our time concerning ourselves with how our skin drapes over our bones or how fat cultivates. “You’re really pretty,” I tell her. She laughs really loudly. “Fuck off.”

“You have never said anything that I thought was astute. You have no authority to talk about life in any capacity. The only reason you are successful at all is because you have exploited other people’s naivety and desperation.” Stop. “Ignorance is bliss, Giuseppe, have you ever heard that? If you ever find yourself feeling particularly blissful, take a moment to appreciate it’s probably because you are incredibly stupid.” “Well you’re a fucking dyke!” Giuseppe shouts, startling me. I hesitate. “How did you know—” “You’re a stupid bitch!” he yells. “Fuck you!” I realize as he continues to shout defamatory names that he was just insulting me using the random slurs that came to his mind and is not actually aware that I am gay. “Get out of my car!”

I am thinking about how enormous my thighs look pressed down on the concrete, while simultaneously thinking about how small I am in the grand scheme of things.

Memories of being younger than eleven were starting to fade. I didn’t feel eleven; I often accidentally answered that I was ten when people asked. I felt like time was moving quickly. I felt nostalgic for being younger, and it bothered me that I’d forgotten things. Who was my teacher in first grade? What color was my living room before my parents painted it? Who was my best friend in kindergarten? I felt like I was never in the moment I was in. I was always looking back, or worried about the future.

I am enraptured by how entertained Eleanor is by this movie. She thinks I’m laughing at the movie, but I’m not—I’m laughing because I am endeared by her. I’m looking at her exposed gummy smile and listening to her quack with laughter. I find it so endearing, it becomes difficult for me to inhale. My vision is blurred in tears, and I am incapable of speech.

“It’s weird to meet someone in person who you’ve already gotten to know, isn’t it?” she said.

I don’t think Frank’s medical advice was right. I don’t think focusing on other people’s happiness will do anything to cure my anxiety. I tried to spend my morning making the people around me happier and I’ve been rewarded with a bruised skull, scalded hands, an unwanted date with a guy, and a panic attack. I stare at my mouth in the mirror. Smile, I tell myself. Smile.

Other times I fixate on how endearing people are. We sleep on soft surfaces; we like to be cozy. When I see cats cuddled up on pillows, I find it sweet; we are like that too. We like to eat cookies and smell flowers. We wear mittens and hats. We visit our families even when we’re old. We like to pet dogs. We laugh; we make involuntary sounds when we find things funny. Laughing is adorable, if you really think about it.

Whenever I played with dolls, I’d make up romantic storylines about two girl Barbies. Before I even knew the word ‘gay,’ I knew I was gay.” “How are your parents with it?” she asked. “They’re okay,” I said. “I haven’t been disowned or anything.” She laughed. “That’s a low bar.”

In this “fun, page-turner of a novel” (Sarah Haywood, New York Times bestselling author) that’s perfect for fans of Mostly Dead Things and Goodbye, Vitamin, a morbidly anxious young woman stumbles into a job as a receptionist at a Catholic church and soon finds herself obsessed with her predecessor’s mysterious death. Gilda, a twenty-something, atheist, animal-loving lesbian, cannot stop ruminating about death. Desperate for relief from her panicky mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local Catholic church, and finds herself being greeted by Father Jeff, who assumes she’s there for a job interview. Too embarrassed to correct him, Gilda is abruptly hired to replace the recently deceased receptionist Grace. In between trying to memorize the lines to Catholic mass, hiding the fact that she has a new girlfriend, and erecting a dirty dish tower in her crumbling apartment, Gilda strikes up an email correspondence with Grace’s old friend. She can’t bear to ignore the kindly old woman who has been trying to reach her friend through the church inbox, but she also can’t bring herself to break the bad news. Desperate, she begins impersonating Grace via email. But when the police discover suspicious circumstances surrounding Grace’s death, Gilda may have to finally reveal the truth of her mortifying existence. With a “kindhearted heroine we all need right now” (Courtney Maum, New York Times bestselling author), Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling and “delightfully weird reminder that we will one day turn to dust and that yes, this is depressing, but it’s also what makes life beautiful” (Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl).

Giovan

I asked myself, “Is there anything I want right now?” and then answered “fries.” I therefore decided to buy the fries instead of killing myself because that seemed logical. You shouldn’t kill yourself when you still want to eat.

Lindsay

My mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby. Every woman in my family before me lived to have a baby—just so that baby could grow up to have another baby. If I don’t have a baby, then all of those women reproduced just so that I could exist. I am the final product. I am the final baby.

I find it so bizarre that I occupy space, and that I am seen by other people. I feel like I am falling through space and Eleanor just threw me a rose. It’s such a sweet, pointless gesture. It would be less devastating to fall through space alone, without someone else falling next to me. Whenever someone does something nice for me, I feel intensely aware of how strange and sad it is to know someone.

The fact that I’m able to carry myself through life without being crushed beneath the psychological weight of being alive proves that I’m a con artist. Aren’t we all con artists?

Sometimes I wonder if I have really been the same person my whole life. I stare at the picture, and think: Is that really me? I have this bizarre feeling like I was a different person at every other stage of my life. I feel so removed from myself then. Sometimes I feel like I was a different person a month ago. A day. Five minutes. Now.

Vicky

Sometimes I fixate on how disgusting humans are. I think about how we do things like litter and invent nuclear bombs. I think about racism, war, rape, child abuse, and climate change. I think about how gross people are. I think about public bathrooms, armpits, and about all of our dirty hands. I think about how infection and diseases are spread. I think about how every human has a butt, and about how disgusting that is.

Mary Rose Gibson

I remember being sixteen and feeling eleven. I remember thinking, how could I be a teenager? I remember finishing high school and thinking, am I grown now? Is this what it feels like? I feel the same as I did before. I think I am an imposter. Twenty-seven years ago I was a baby. Before that I was a clump of cells. Before that I didn’t exist. How could I be a bookstore clerk, or a Catholic, or a woman, or a person at all? I’m a life force contained in the deformed body of a baby. Of course I’m a fraud. The fact that I’m able to carry myself through life without being crushed beneath the psychological weight of being alive proves that I’m a con artist. Aren’t we all con artists?

“You’re a stupid bitch!” he yells. “Fuck you!” I realize as he continues to shout defamatory names that he was just insulting me using the random slurs that came to his mind and is not actually aware that I am gay.” 

“My mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby. Every woman in my family before me lived to have a baby — just so that baby could grow up to have another baby. If I don’t have a baby, then all of those women reproduced just so that I could exist. I am the final product. I am the final baby.” 

this book is a page-turner book indeed. i love the way the author describes how depression looks like in gilda's way of thinking. i annotated a lot of sentences from this book because it's all relatable to me, especially the part that mentions how lazy we are to do anything when we're depressed, like, we don't have the energy to even wash the dishes and let the mold grow inside our glass, it's so relatable to me because i've been in that phase. as a reader, i also feel frustrated about how gilda's actions make people misunderstand, and it makes me more understanding about the reason behind someone else's actions. sometimes it's not like we usually see them. people who always look fine on the outside don't mean they are also fine inside. 

in my opinion, gilda's behaviour is affected by things that surrounded her in her whole life. the way her parents never acknowledge her emotions well makes her feel afraid and always scared to be her true self; she is always afraid to show her true emotions because her parents are always accusing her of things that she is not involved in, which i find frustrating, and i am also sad for eli. also, gilda has people-pleaser traits in herself because she always absorbs other people's energy in a way that makes her think too deeply and feel more than the others, which makes her difficult to be understood by other people. even though doctors couldn't help her either in this book (which i found so frustrating also).

this book helps me to understand more about depression, anxiety, and mental illness. and somehow, i feel like i'm not alone, because this book kind of helps me to acknowledge my own emotions that were trapped in my mind all this time. everyone should read this book once in their life.

love, kinanti

this book is a page-turner book indeed. i love the way the author describes how depression looks like in gilda's way of thinking. i annotated a lot of sentences from this book because it's all relatable to me, especially the part that mentions how lazy we are to do anything when we're depressed, like, we don't have the energy to even wash the dishes and let the mold grow inside our glass, it's so relatable to me because i've been in that phase. as a reader, i also feel frustrated about how gilda's actions make people misunderstand, and it makes me more understanding about the reason behind someone else's actions. sometimes it's not like we usually see them. people who always look fine on the outside don't mean they are also fine inside. 

in my opinion, gilda's behaviour is affected by things that surrounded her in her whole life. the way her parents never acknowledge her emotions well makes her feel afraid and always scared to be her true self; she is always afraid to show her true emotions because her parents are always accusing her of things that she is not involved in, which i find frustrating, and i am also sad for eli. also, gilda has people-pleaser traits in herself because she always absorbs other people's energy in a way that makes her think too deeply and feel more than the others, which makes her difficult to be understood by other people. even though doctors couldn't help her either in this book (which i found so frustrating also).


this book helps me to understand more about depression, anxiety, and mental illness. and somehow, i feel like i'm not alone, because this book kind of helps me to acknowledge my own emotions that were trapped in my mind all this time. everyone should read this book once in their life.

“Now, do you ever think about how people might wish that for you?”

shen

Poucas páginas para tantos sentimentos, queria mais. São tantos conceitos e experiências emocionais humanas retratadas, que você se pega olhando para as próprias mãos e questionando tudo que elas já fizeram, você se questiona da forma que a protagonista o faz o tempo todo. Tive tantas conclusões próprias apenas lendo sobre o dia a dia dessa personagem ansiosa e maluca e esse é um dos meus tipos preferidos de história, as que me fazem pensar por mim mesma. Por fim, ao ler o finalzinho, penso que a felicidade profunda vem depois de sentimentos opostos com a mesma profundidade, não do raso; fico muito feliz que ela parece no caminho de descobrir isso por si só também. (Sim, sei que é apenas uma personagem)

Gelaine Trinidad

emelia grace ilgner

who gave her permission to write my internal monologue

Wes Michaud

This book was so good I loved it and the mental health rep was amazing I really felt seen when I was reading this book and the twist at the end kept me up at 3am just so I could finish the book I read this for sapph-lit and went to the author interview with the author she so nice and I can't wait to read her future books

Anjorin Molayo 

We live in a world where our differences aren't celebrated, but frowned upon. It was heartbreaking to live through the achingly familiar journey of Gilda, who struggles with mental health issues as well as being a lesbian in an environment that bashes or ignores her queerness. She is filled with a heart bursting with empathy and compassion, but is often misunderstood. As someone often described as too sensitive, it strikes a chord in me. It was a very emotionally taxing yet beautiful read.

deniz

abby .˚｡⋆ ༊ .˚｡⋆

this simultaneously threw me into an existential crisis and dragged me back out again

Lili

Isabella 

complex character who is trying to function properly while dealing with their own mental health.

well like, accurate depiction of how thoughts of death (not just yours but Everyone's) can consume you when you're depressed and anxious and how you are and you feel Deeply Unlikeable but also genuinely what an Annoying MC. also as an ex-catholic queer person...... lmao?????

cee 

Kendall McClain

Still really good, but definitely thought it was better the first time around

disappointing read. the character are very one dimensional. they have their lines which line up with their trope and never show complexity. 

autistic mc w anxiety and depression. some lines r relatable but overall not too much complexity with her either. 

the mc is shown to go out of her way and shows empathy and kindness toward a lost cat and strangers more than her trans sister tbh. she does worry about her alcoholism but never shows support for her being trans despite knowing or highly suspecting.

overall just a stream of thoughts. like if u didn't experience most of these (with more depth) at age 14 yourself than you can just go on twitter or like idk random text blocks on 

 and see strangers share similar things lol

rengaze

disappointing read. the character are very one dimensional. they have their lines which line up with their trope and never show complexity. 

autistic mc w anxiety and depression. some lines r relatable but overall not too much complexity with her either. 

the mc is shown to go out of her way and shows empathy and kindness toward a lost cat and strangers more than her trans sister tbh. she does worry about her alcoholism but never shows support for her being trans despite knowing or highly suspecting.

overall just a stream of thoughts. like if u didn't experience most of these (with more depth) at age 14 yourself than you can just go on twitter or like idk random text blocks on are.na and see strangers share similar things lol

farrah 

peak character development is when gilda finally washes her dishes after months of not doing so because of depression

in all seriousness, i really enjoyed this book. which feels a bit weird to say because it’s about someone who has an overwhelming fear of death but can’t stop thinking about it. gilda is perpetually anxious, depressed, and has no idea what she’s doing most of the time or what her future will look like.

the story is written in an stream of consciousness style, told through vignettes of gilda’s day to day life and inner musings. almost as if you’re reading someone’s journal entries. the prose reminds me a lot of chemistry by weike wang, which is another one of my fav books.

reann

the premise was a lot more interesting than the execution. honestly my tummy hurt the whole time. the only character I really liked was her girlfriend (who she treated like doodoo)

petrina

lexie

i love how she cared about what other people’s feelings. this book gave what needed to be gave. the frustration and anxiety we feel as she tell her story

Jazmine Manere

i read this thinking it would be a 5 star read but it was disappointing—i expected something a lot different. i found the parts on existential dread and anxiety relatable but that was about it. not worth reading imo the writing was also underwhelming :( wasted potential

Mary Makarious

** spoiler alert **
           [3.5 stars rounded up]
After reading "Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead" by Emily R. Austin, I have to admit that my feelings about the book are quite mixed. It's a deep dive into the realms of mental illness and loneliness, portraying them in a raw and realistic way. However, I can't overlook the fact that the abrupt ending left me feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

The main character, Gilda, is a 27-year-old atheist lesbian who is stuck in a dark place. Her thoughts constantly revolve around death, and she battles with anxiety and panic attacks. Her life is in disarray, with her apartment resembling a chaotic mess and her chronic lateness and forgetfulness costing her one job after another. 

Unexpectedly, Gilda stumbles upon a receptionist job at a Catholic church, which adds an ironic twist to the story. She must pretend to be a devout Catholic, hiding her true identity as an atheist and a lesbian. As the plot unfolds, a mysterious death comes into play, adding an element of intrigue and mystery.

Character development was an aspect that left me wanting more. Gilda, being the central character, deserved to be explored in greater depth. I longed to truly understand her and connect with her on a more profound level. Unfortunately, the supporting characters were hit-or-miss, with only a couple leaving a lasting impression. Gilda might be the sole character I remember vividly.

The writing style had a conversational quality to it, which made the book easy to read and maintained a smooth flow. However, the ending fell short for me. It felt sudden and failed to tie up loose ends satisfactorily. 

In conclusion, "Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead" takes readers on a journey through the troubled mind of Gilda, tackling themes of mental illness and loneliness with a raw and honest approach. I loved the way it was written: almost urgent and disjointed, making it all the more realistic.

Bianca Boscaro

4,5

caramba!!!!! no começo demorei um pouco pra engatar na história e depois não conseguia parar de ler, da uma angústia tremenda ver os pensamentos dela e ainda mais se identificar as vezes

o último acontecimento do livro foi o que me arrancou lágrimas 🥺

Denaiir

this book was a bit too bleak and slow for me, I was waiting for things to either get better or at least for something to happen. I really enjoyed the ending but it took a while to get there

tori

4.5 because I like depressed main characters

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

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