Monday, August 12, 2013

Review: Every Day

Every Day
David Levithan
322 pages (Hardcover)
Knopf Books for Young Readers


Blurb:

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.



Review:

Every Day is a book that I read a while back and it took me a little bit to process. I thought the story was beautiful. I thought the story was horrible. I got freaking punched in the gut by this a few times also. I've finally decided that I need to explain how I feel about this one.

Since A lives his life in other peoples bodies, this obviously presented an issue that made normal life impossible. But A was getting along anyways, even if he was lonely and wanting for a lot of things that he couldn't have. He was even respectful to the bodies he took over and occupied by not changing things for them or by trying to help people out. He was a genuinely nice person and he wasn't even overly bitter about not having his own life most of the time.

After he fell in love with Rhiannon though, he started to really hate his life. He did things that go against his own rules to try and be with her. Throughout most of the book, I didn't really like Rhiannon. She didn't care about A very much, sometimes she was disgusted by him even when it wasn't his fault, and I just didn't get why A liked her so much. But A really did care about her.

I haven't read a lot of books with the body-switching element. In fact, this is the only book I've read that had that element. I thought it was really well executed. It added drama and problems that helped to keep the plot moving at a steady pace.

Now I've just got to quickly mention the ending, because this review can't be complete until I mention it. I'm not going to spoil anything, but I've got to say that it totally blew me out of the water. I didn't see it coming and it shocked and upset me. But at the same time, I really loved it. The friend who recommended Every Day to me told me she'd felt nearly the exact same way as me. So just be warned, the ending was pretty intense.

Overall, this book's hangover level is a 4 out of 5.

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