Everything You Ever Wanted cover art

Everything You Ever Wanted

A Florence Welch Between Two Books Pick

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Everything You Ever Wanted

By: Luiza Sauma
Narrated by: Stephanie Racine
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Everything You Ever Wanted written by Luiza Sauma, read by Stephanie Racine.

You wake up. You go to work. You don't go outside for twelve hours at a time. You have strategy meetings about how to use hashtags. After work you order expensive drink after expensive drink until you're so blackout drunk you can't remember the circumstances which have led you to waking up in bed with your colleague. The next day you stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much. Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all.

Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back.

But you aren't worried about that.

After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?

 Dystopian Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Science Fiction Space Opera Suspense Thriller & Suspense Women's Fiction Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Boy Parts cover art
Granta cover art
Ghosted cover art
Who's Loving You cover art
If Only cover art
The Seep cover art
Okay Days cover art

Critic reviews

Sauma skewers the falsities and disappointments of contemporary life and work with rare sensitivity, unfolding an evocative narrative of unearthly escape. I loved it (Megan Hunter, author of 'The End We Start From')
Every now and then, a book comes along and pins down the wild thoughts that have been circling around in your brain as you question the meaning of your life in the bath at midnight. Manages to sensitively unpack the frustrations of modern life while appreciating how funny the banality of it all is
An important and poignant novel that captures the ennui, panic and stubborn optimism of the zeitgeist with spirit, humour and a fearless portrayal of human truth (Helen Cullen, author of 'The Lost Letters of William Woolf')
Beautifully written . . . Everything You Ever Wanted explores our current obsession with a meaningful life
Everything You Ever Wanted is one of the most original and urgent novels I've read this year. Sauma dives under the skin of the way we live now and makes it into an astonishing new shape. Funny, heart-breaking and thought-provoking - a novel that talks about all the things we are most afraid to talk about. Read it! (Clare Fisher , author 'All the Good Things')
Sauma's wondrous novel could not be more timely. Captures the era of social media addiction and status anxiety perfectly. . . . with echoes of The Truman Show and 1984
Uplifting, unputdownable and mordantly funny, Everything You Ever Wanted is the dystopian beach read you didn't know you needed. It's a love letter to London from outer space. It's both a speculative dystopian drama and a deadpan office satire. It's a brilliantly relatable and ambitious ode to the humdrum and the sublime; a truly original novel that captures the pleasures and displeasures of modern, earthly life. (Sharlene Teo, author of 'Ponti')
Everything You Ever Wanted is so sharp-eyed about our hidden hopes and tiny hypocrisies. Even the most fantastical elements feel painfully, perfectly true. I'd follow Sauma's voice down any wormhole (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of 'Harmless Like You')
A daring and original novel that asks profound questions about the way we live today whilst being simultaneously playful and fun. Sauma is brilliant at nailing the details of contemporary life in a way that is recognisable to anyone who has suffered the mundanity of office jobs. (Laura Kaye, author of 'English Animals')
Courageous, haunting, and beautiful-with EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED, Luiza Sauma takes us on a breathtaking voyage through both the farthest reaches of space and the innermost depths of the human soul (Peng Shepherd, author of 'The Book of M')
All stars
Most relevant
I had hoped that this book would be about living on another planet, exploring and discovering things etc. Instead the main protagonist Iris spent 7 years living inside a capsule without ever going outside.
There is instead a lot of interpersonal interaction, with fellow earth envoys, but to me the main character Iris had a seriously flawed personality which irritated throughout.
I listen to audiobooks whilst working on various projects indoors, so I did get to the end of the book, but I doubt I would have , had I listed to it without distraction.
Not a terrible book, and the moral of « be careful what you wish for » is I guess illustrated, albeit at considerable length

Not really about discovering living on another planet

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wow. This book was really different. It was well narrated, the story was a little flawed but well pursued. it was a soul searching journey with thought provoking reality. I didnt enjoy the end. It made me appreciate my life more though.

Geeze !!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I was waiting for something interesting to happen the whole way through but it never seems to get there. very disappointed by the ending.

Nothing happens...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
If you've read 'I who have never known men' or even 'The Loneliest Girl in the Universe' don't bother with this because you've already peaked. This is like those but the main character isn't as well written, the background and sci-fi part doesn't make sense and this ending is lazy and left too open. It's not even in a vague 'was it this or that?' Layer Cake kind of way - it doesn't tie up a single loose end. It was doing OK up until about 80% and a decent ending could have saved it but the ending really let it down imo so 3/5.

It could have been ended sooner and better.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have to say I like the promise of the book but was heavily disappointed with the execution. I found the writing simple, characters where rarely developed, the ending highly unbelievable and the science beyond amateur. sadly this book was not for me.

Simple writing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews