The Best of Everything by Kit de Waal
Published 2025 · 271 pages · 80,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is The Best of Everything to read?
The Best of Everything scores 27 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it relatively accessible. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 28 out of 100
- De Waal writes in plain, warm contemporary prose, and reviewers praise her word-perfect, empathetic sentences. The register sits near Beach Read and It Ends with Us, with a little more literary polish.
- Sentence structure: 28 out of 100
- Reviews describe a readable, character-driven novel that people finish in a sitting. Sentence structure is likely clear and contemporary, in the territory of Beach Read.
- Abstraction: 30 out of 100
- The book centres on a nurse's devotion to her son, a tragedy and a found family, which makes it concrete and emotional. It sits close to It Ends with Us in its personal, direct focus.
- Information density: 27 out of 100
- Reviewers call it light on plot and slow, which points to a comfortable pace with few threads to track. It reads lighter than The Housemaid and close to Beach Read.
- Narrative indirection: 30 out of 100
- Reader reviews stress emotional directness and a clear portrayal of Paulette's kindness. Little suggests the reader must infer hidden meaning, so it sits near Beach Read.
- Symbolic density: 28 out of 100
- The title and the planned gingham quilt hint at a few domestic motifs, but reviews describe a plain, character-led story rather than an allegorical one. The symbolic layer sits near Beach Read.
- Ironic distance: 20 out of 100
- Reviews describe sincere, empathetic writing about kindness and forgiveness. The tone resembles the earnest engagement of It Ends with Us.
- Resolution withholding: 28 out of 100
- Descriptions of found family and the long way back from heartbreak suggest an emotional resolution. The book likely closes in the manner of It Ends with Us.
- Structural complexity: 26 out of 100
- Descriptions present a linear, character-centred story following Paulette, with no sign of formal experiment. It resembles the linear structure of Beach Read.
How The Best of Everything is regarded
The Best of Everything holds a literary regard score of 34 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.