Review: "Everything Changes Everything" by Lauren Kessler

Everything Changes Everything by Lauren Kessler
Published February 2026 via Balance
★★★★

When Kessler set out on the Camino de Santiago, she was navigating grief, and she needed to take that grief somewhere. Call it a reason or a purpose or a call.

This, also, is a lesson of the Camino that translates directly to life: that occasionally and gloriously, there are true aha moments, but mostly there is the long slow toward making sense of who you are. (loc. 1762*)

I came into this have read 1) nearly every memoir about the Camino that I've been able to get my hands on and 2) two of Kessler's previous books, one of which I loved and one of which I loved less. The combination seemed like pretty good odds, to be honest, and—as it happened—the odds made good.

There's a lot here: Kessler weaves between the now and then, between her journey on the Camino and all the things that came before. She's slow to share the details of that Before, so I won't spoil anything (the shape of it becomes clearer and clearer as the story goes on, but, you know...in its own time), but suffice it to say that the details are a doozy.

One of the things I love so much about Camino memoirs is that although the path may be the same—there are multiple Camino routes,** but the Francés is the most heavily traversed, and even on other routes the basic idea is the same—each person's journey is different. Walking through restlessness or grief or change; walking with months and months of preparation or only the barest of knowledge; staying in cheap municipal lodging with fifty bunks to a room or in boutique hotels with crisp sheets and hot showers; processing big things or simply having an adventure. Maybe this is what I love so much about memoir in general.

Kessler makes excellent work of telling a complicated, messy story with very little judgement or shame. Parts of the story are quite dramatic, and it works in the book's favor that Kessler stays steady throughout, drawing on journalistic skills to tell the story without letting emotion (and to be clear: very valid emotion) take over. I wouldn't recommend this as the only Camino book you read, but down the line or as something to read when thinking about grief? Yes.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

**And judging by Kessler's social media, the Francés is not the last one she walked

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.