Every Day Review

     After having seen David Levithan speak about writing, him holding the door for me (I know, crazy right?), and Maya recommending to me his books, I felt that the universe was really telling me to sit down and just read one of them. So I did. I read Every Day By David Levithan.

     What did I think about it? I'm gonna be honest. I didn't love it. But I can't say I hated it either, and so (while taking into account the author's door holding abilities) I'll give it a three and a half star. I feel that some of the messages the plot carried were really strong, and got their point across perfectly (I'll get more into those later), but the actual plot, and specifically the romance, was a little weak.

     Every Day is bout a person named A. He is neither a boy or a girl, because every day (hence the title) he wakes up as a new person, in a new body, but still as himself (I'm going to refer to him as a boy by the way). His life has always been like this, but he learns to accept it, and everything goes well until he meets a girl, and love just takes things on a wild adventure that results in the rest of the book which I'm not going to spoil for you, you're welcome.

     One of the themes that has already come up in just a short summary of the book, is the unimportance of gender. Levithan approaches this subject often, saying at the beginning of the book that males and females are 98% the same and that society has spent the previous millenniums of its existence focusing on that 2% of difference. He demonstrates his point further by having A wake up as a boy who knows that he's only a girl on the outside, and later, a guy named Hugo who goes to a gay rights protest with his boyfriend. This is the part of the book I love, and Levithan makes it better by acknowledging that while people may not be opposed to the idea of same-sex relationships, not everyone is comfortable or can understand them. Rhiannon, "the girl", is always less affectionate and more uncomfortable when A meets her in female form, because society has engrained boy-girl relationships into us for so long. This aspect of the book was spot on.

     And now for the part I was underwhelmed with. Let's face it, the plot and the romance were weak. The idea of the book, waking up in a different body every morning, was a really cool and unique idea, but where this idea's taken, is less so. I especially didn't feel the romance; not only was it weird and impossible, I never felt like the characters really loved each other, especially Rhiannon. Maybe, if I could've heard a bit of the story from her perspective I could've seen a little more of a spark, but I think it all worked out to be rather one-sided. And finally, while the ending was sweet, I found it very unsatisfying, like "I just read 314 pages to get to here? Come on!"

     So all-in-all, it was a good book, with a good message, and I definitely think you should go and read it, but be warned, if you're looking for a wild, passionate, heart-breaking romance, you're not in the right place.

~ Adair