All These Things I've Done

by:  Gabrielle Zevin
published by:  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
publish date:  September 6, 2011

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight—at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.


Cute little story about this book.  In order to get this book at ALA, you had to get in line to get a coffee and a piece of chocolate first.  I thought that was fun since the book was about a future where coffee and chocolate were illegal.

I liked this book overall.  I thought it was an interesting concept.  I think this is going to be a really popular book once it comes out.  There's a lot of buzz about it already.  It was recently featured in Teen Vogue's Top Summer Reads. 

One of the things I didn't understand was why has this future occurred?  We're talking 70 years from now and there was no paper, little water, the Statue of Liberty had been scrapped, and all their clothes had been recycled.  There wasn't any explanation, just this is the way things are.  This is the beginning of a series (it's YA of course it is!!) so perhaps it'll be explained in later books.