The Weight of Everything (2026) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing very well. It's a humid, rainy Wednesday here today, which is the perfect kind of day for a blog post. Luckily, I knew exactly what today's post was going to be on. A week ago I ordered two books from Amazon. One was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, the other was a brand new book called The Weight of Everything by an author named Steven L. Morgan. That's the book I read first, and I finished it before bed last night, so that's what I'm going to be talking about today. Let's get into it!

I found out about this book because Perry, my good friend from the The Cassette Phase YouTube channel, reviewed it on the channel last week as part of a larger conversation about the nostalgic books and comics he'd been reading, and because The Weight of Everything is set in two different time periods, 1984-1986, and then in 1999, Perry chose to talk about it in that video. I liked the premise of the book enough that the day after I watched Perry's video, I ordered a copy for myself. It arrived on Friday and that night before bed, I started reading it. I was hooked.

The Weight of Everything is about a 25 year old named William Hawthorne is called to have a DNA sample taken at a lab in Abilene, Texas, and he thinks it has to do with the disappearance of his best friend, Marty Winslow, which happened in the spring of 1985, when William, then known as Billy, was 11 years old. During his long trip from where he was living in Tennessee to the lab in Abilene, Texas, Billy remembers the events leading up to Marty's disappearance as well as the immediate aftermath of that event.

While that may be the premise of this book, The Weight of Everything isn't about that. It's about friendship, first crushes, peer pressure, family, summer nights, school, and the daily life that we all shared regardless of the decade we grew up in. It's about childhood, and being that age just before you reach your teenage years.

The most important thing this book is about is people. I relate to stories the most when the focus is on the people involved in them. The thing that kept me watching The Goldbergs for almost the entire time the show was on the air was the characters. The people. The '80s references were great, but the show wouldn't've stayed on the air for ten years if the show was only about the '80s pop culture references. And what kept me engaged with this book were the characters. The people. Because they felt like people. 

Growing up, I knew girls named Jessica, Laura, Stacy, and Amber and boys named Billy, Jimmy, Desmond, and Marty. I lived in a small town where everybody knew everybody. I went to school with the kids of the people my mom and my uncle went to school with when they were growing up. I had indoor recesses when it was raining or really cold out. I wondered who my teacher would be the following school year, until the phone call or letter came to let us know who it would be. 

And so, after reading several chapters each night, I'd think about the kids I went to school with from 1994 to 1999. I thought about the teachers I had. I thought about everything I did at recess every day, as well as what I did when I got home from school. The nurses I had. 

So not only was I spending time with Billy, Marty, Jessica, Laura, Amber, Jimmy, Stacey, Darnell, and Desmond while I read this book, but I was back in the schoolyard at Greely Elementary School from September 1994 to June 1999 with Garrett, Spencer, Maegan, Meagan, Trina, Ashley, Morgan, Tracy, Jessica, Jasmine, Heather, Kayla, Chelsea, Lindsay, Jesse, David R., David F., Faith, Rob, Tyler, Tyler T., Chad, Dillon, Colin, Cory, Jaime, Jason B, Jason S., Leslie, Stacy, Jordan B. Jordan C., Rachel, Patrick, Alex, Eric, Gloria, and every other kid I ever went to school with during the five years that I spent at that school.

Steven L. Morgan, the author of The Weight of Everything, said in his author's note that writing this book took him back to when he was the age of Billy and his friends, getting into the same kind of shenanigans that Billy and his friends got into in the book. It shows. 

One of the problems I have with Ernest Cline's books, Ready Player One and Armada (I haven't read Ready Player Two yet) is that they have the flimsiest plots and one dimensional characters and so the pop culture references, all from the '70s and '80s (or earlier) end up carrying the stories because there isn't anything else there. The references are there because the stories wouldn't work without them. And some TV shows and movies focusing on nostalgia have the same problem. The references are the focus, not the characters. The Weight of Everything does not have that problem. The references are there because the characters experience them. They aren't the center of the story. Steven didn't cram as many as he could into the plot. They occurred naturally, because that's the time period the story is set in. So what were kids into in 1984 and 1985? G.I. Joe, The Transformers, and Cabbage Patch Kids. All three are mentioned in this book. 

The book isn't all sunshine and rainbows however. Marty disappears and is presumed dead, back in town Billy ends up under suspicion as he was the last person to see Marty as they'd been on a camping trip in the woods just outside of town, and other bad things happen within a short span of time, which causes Billy and his family to leave Hemlock Grove. Without spoiling the end though, what takes him to Abilene, Texas, and eventually back to Hemlock Grove, in 1999 has nothing to do with Marty's disappearance, and he discovers some good things have happened as well as some unexpected things. In fact, there's quite a twist at the beginning of the book's final act. I never saw it coming, and yet when it was revealed to me, I felt nothing but joy for William/Billy.

I loved the dynamic between Billy and Amber. We all remember that first crush. It can be so awkward sometimes. Especially when your feelings are reciprocated by the person you have a crush on. And yet, it can be the best feeling in the world. Especially when you're between the ages of 10 and 13. The friend group is great too. The girls join the boys for just about every activity, except for the prank that Billy and Marty played on the girls having a sleepover at Amber's house obviously. There's none of that boys thinking the girls can't play video games with them at the arcade simply because they're girls crap going on. Which I'm thankful for, because that also wasn't my experience growing up. Not at the age that Billy and his friends are in the book.

By the way, one more thing I remember happening in my life that was in the book, was that not all of my friends were in the same grade as me. In the book, Amber is a grade behind Billy and the others, while Darnell and Desmond are a grade ahead of them. The book doesn't mention split grade classes like I had for grades 3, 4, and 6 (grade 2/3 split for grade 3, grade 4/5 split for grade 4, and grade 5/6 split for grade 6), but yeah, not all of my friends were in the same grade as me. Some were in the grade behind me, some were in the grade ahead of me, some were two grades behind me and some were two grades ahead of me. And sometimes that meant that those who were in the grade ahead of me would start at a new school because Greely Elementary only went up to grade 6 or I'd end up at the new school before my friends who were a grade behind me.

Overall, this was an awesome book. I highly recommend that you read it. Especially if you're into nostalgia the way I am, or just grew up in the '80s or even the '90s. Steven self-published it through Amazon, so it's available on Amazon if you'd like to get a copy for yourself. Just type "The Weight of Everything by Steven L. Morgan" into the Amazon search bar and it should pop up immediately. It's such a fun read, and like it said, it brought me back to when I was the age that Billy and his friends are in the book, and brought me back to all the people that I haven't seen in almost 30 years, because they either didn't continue going to the same schools as I did or they moved away at some point.

That's going to be it for me for today my friends. I'll be over on My Nostalgia Blog at some point to talk more about my time at Greely Elementary School in the mid to late '90s, and for this week's Rental Recommendations post. Until then have a great week and I will talk to you all later. Take care.