Critical Praise

"A withering Silicon Valley satire... From the ashes of their California dreams, the three [women] must learn to talk to each other instead of past each other, and build a new, slightly more realistic existence --- but not without doses of revenge and hilarity. Brown's hip narrative reads like a sharp, contemporary twist on The Corrections."

—Publishers Weekly

"A razor-sharp critique of the absurd expectations that, these days, have come to stand for ambition, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is wrenching, riveting, and still manages to be great fun. This is a wise, intimate chronicle of one family’s struggle to take off their masks and live in the place they most feared: the real, imperfect world."

—Meghan Daum, author of The Quality of Life Report

"Rarely does a first novelist write with such confidence and grace. All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is a marvelous book."

—Ayelet Waldman, author of Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

"Janelle Brown's beautiful debut explores the tiny fissures in our lives and what happens when those fissures erupt into chasms. Excruciatingly funny, unrelentingly painful --- this extraordinary book gives us something only the best novels can: a glimpse of what it means to be human."

—Katherine Taylor, author of Rules for Saying Goodbye