Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Publisher: Text Publishing
Original release date: August 28, 2012
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 1921922958
Pages: 324
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Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

Every morning, A wakes in a different person’s body, a different person’s life. 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.

And then 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 A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

MY THOUGHTS

This book was spectacular. This was my first David Levithan book but I loved it so much that I rushed out today to pick up some more of his books.

This novel was so engrossing that I didn’t want to put it down. I flew through it in a couple of hours. It features a lot of unique and interesting characters and also tackles many issues that we see in society today, including mental illness, drug and alcohol use/abuse, grief, and LGBT issues. Even though the book addresses all of these things, everything just fit together so seamlessly into a beautiful story. The writing in this book was beautiful. David Levithan makes use of differing sentence lengths and chapter lengths so wonderfully and with such great impact. The book felt deep and poetic but was very easy to read.

The book doesn’t try to explain why A wakes up in a different body each day, and I really appreciated that. I liked that Every Day wasn’t that type of book, and that we didn’t get all the answers, because the story isn’t about that. The story is about humanity and belonging, and what it means to be connected with other people. What David Levithan gave us was incredibly moving and heartbreaking, and I was thoroughly satisfied with how everything played out. Everything in this book just worked. We jump into the A and Rhiannon story from the very first chapter, and even though it was a little bit insta-lovey, it all just felt right. Nothing in this book felt far-fetched. My one minor criticism about the plot was that the ending felt slightly rushed, but I also think it ended in a way that leaves the door open for a sequel.

In this book, we not only get to see A’s story, but also the stories of the people A wakes up as. They were all such interesting and diverse characters, and even though we only get small glimpses of them, I was able to connect with every single one of them. What was really interesting was that A was able to retain his own personality even when in the bodies of different people. He refers to them in third person, so we can see a disconnection between A and whoever he is for the day. A has such as strong and likeable voice that I was really able to connect with him, despite him being a different person each day. Even though we don’t know what A is, we know who he is. And I thought that made this book very special.

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UPCOMING COMPANION NOVEL

Another Day is a companion to Every Day that will be released at the end of August, 2015. This isn’t a sequel, but a companion novel. So it will be about the same events in Every Day but from Rhiannon’s point of view.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. Before reading Every Day, I was excited that there was a companion being released. But having now read Every Day, I feel like that book works so well as a standalone. Also, Rhiannon is a bit of a weak character, with not much self-esteem, and I don’t know how much I would connect with her and enjoy reading from her perspective.

I’ve also heard that Another Day ends in the exact same place as Every Day and I don’t think I can go through that twice. If there was a sequel, I would be more excited about picking it up. But at the same time, Every Day was so great that I don’t want future books to ruin it for me.