My huge thanks to Sabah Khan at Simon and Schuster for sending me a copy of Everything You Have by Kate Ruby in return for an honest review. It’s my pleasure to share that review today.

Everything You Have will be published in paperback by Simon and Schuster on 1st August 2024 and is available for pre-order here.

Everything You Have

The perfect assistant is not all she seems in this gripping suspense thriller from the author of the Richard & Judy pick Tell Me Your Lies. 

Sasha Fulton looks like she has it all – the glittering media career, the happy marriage, the perfect kids. But the truth behind the shining façade is very different. The job is nothing but pressure, and the stroppy teens aren’t even hers. She’s fast reaching breaking point.

When Sasha’s new twenty-something assistant Jenna walks through the door, she seems like the answer to her prayers. Dazzlingly efficient, with a whip-smart wit, Sasha’s soon wondering how she ever lived without her.

But with trouble mounting at home and at work, Sasha is starting to lose control. As the lines between professional and personal become dangerously blurred, she feels like there’s only one person she can rely on.

Sasha is heading for a fall. But is Jenna there to catch her, or to push her over the edge?

My Review of Everything You Have

Sasha needs a new assistant. 

Everything You Have is a pressure cooker of a book. It shimmers with poisonous menace that builds throughout. It’s filled with manipulative, self-serving characters who get right under your skin and keep you turning the pages. This is a dark and nasty book and I thought it was excellent.

There’s an intense and claustrophobic atmosphere because of the alternate viewpoints of Sasha and Jenna. I found it interesting that Sasha’s narrative is first person as if she’s more trustworthy and important than Jenna and yet I found her equally manipulative and devious. The pendulum swing of viewpoint is mirrored by that of the reader’s feelings. Kate Ruby made me keep changing my mind about who was most at fault.

Indeed, I thought the characterisation was really well drawn. Sasha’s step-daughter Georgie is so empathetic and I had huge sympathy for her. Vulnerable and hurting, she becomes the lynchpin of action taken by Sasha and Jenna who both manipulate her for their own gains. She made me want to climb into the pages of Everything You Have and comfort her. 

It’s obvious from Sasha’s end of chapter asides to the reader that Jenna is a threat, but why that is the case and what she truly plans only gradually becomes uncovered. Sasha is intelligent, scheming and Machiavellian. But so too is Sasha and the very company they both work for, Bright, is predicated on steering people, on making them believe in fabricated concepts so that there’s a real sense of justice as the story unfolds. 

I was completely fascinated by the insight into corporate big business through Bright. Kate Ruby depicts the cut-throat attitudes, the internal politics, the pressures and the tenuous successes that all place pressure on individuals so that there’s an added layer of toxicity in the story.

It’s hard to review Everything You Have without spoilers. There are themes of family and identity, of abandonment and mental health, of belonging and revenge. I think the greatest success of Everything You Have, however, is the concept of manipulation. It’s at the heart of the story and Kate Ruby manipulates the reader incredibly successfully so that they finish the book wondering just what might happen next. I really, really enjoyed it.

About Kate Ruby

Photo credit – Simon Annand

Kate Ruby is a pseudonym for an award-winning TV drama producer and screenwriter. Her previous novel, Tell Me Your Lies, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick in 2022 and is now in development for TV with a major US network after a fierce bidding war for the rights. Everything You Have is already under option for the screen. Kate balances her writing career alongside her work as an executive producer, with recent credits including The Girl Before for the BBC and HBO and The Flatshare for Paramount Plus.

For further information, follow Kate on Twitter/X @katerubybooks or Instagram.