Portobello Book Blog

This Could Be Everything is the latest novel from Eva Rice and was published yesterday. One of her previous novels, The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets, is currently being developed into a tv series. I’m pleased to share my review today.

About the book

From the author of modern classic The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets comes a feel-good novel about hope, love and the powerful bond between sisters. 
 
It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster for a new movie called Pretty Woman. 
 
February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.   
 
THIS COULD BE EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than you, and the hope a yellow bird can bring… 

My Thoughts

February is a very appropriate month to be reading this book since that’s the name of the main character. She got her unusual name as she was due to be born in February although she and her twin sister Diana, actually arrived some weeks earlier. The book is set in 1990 when February is nineteen and when I was twenty. With some flashback scenes to the 1980, I found this a really a nostalgic read with lots of familiar music, films, radio shows etc. It brought back many memories, particularly of taping the Charts show each week! There’s a great playlist you can listen to while you read.

February has had such tragedy in her life and my heart just went out to her. The tragedies she has experienced have left her traumatised and agoraphobic. The canary which flies into her kitchen and into her life could just be the catalyst for change. Yellow, as it’s called, jolts her out of her safe routine. Grief has really trapped her and it was hard to see how much this young woman had suffered. Through February, we see how grief ‘doesn’t have a pattern but waits to trip you up’. It’s the little things that get you when you are least expecting it, and I think that most people will identify with this.

Throughout the book it struck me how many people weren’t entirely who they said or seemed to be in different ways. Even February to a certain extent wasn’t allowing herself to be all she could be, feeling to live fully was to dishonour those she had lost.

Above all this book is about hope and the ways it can come into and change your life, often in the most unexpected of ways. February is a very compelling character doing her best to navigate difficult circumstances. This Could Be Everything is a nostalgic, sometimes funny, often emotional and ultimately hopeful book.

This Could Be Everything by Eva Rice is published by Simon & Schuster.
I’m grateful to the publishers for my review copy.

About the Author

Eva Rice has written 5 novels and is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets- a post-war coming-of-age story that was runner-up in the 2006 Richard and Judy Book of the Year. A 10th anniversary edition of the novel was published in 2015 with a foreword by Miranda Hart. The Lost Art Of Keeping Secrets is currently being developed by Fudge Park (creators of The Inbetweeners) and Moonage Pictures (Pursuit of Love) as a major new TV series. Eva has toured with bands since her early twenties. She has written the music and lyrics for Harriet a musical based on an early Jilly Cooper novel due to open in 2023. She has a geek-like fascination with pop music, and her party trick is recalling chart positions. Follow her on twitter @EvaRiceAuthor