Monday, September 9, 2013

Every Day

Every Day
David Levithan

Every Day (Every Day, #1)

Genre: Young Adult

Summary (from Goodreads):  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: I really liked this book while I was reading it, and would likely have given it at least 4 stars if I had written the review right away.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that certain aspects of the book bothered me, so the rating was down-graded.  I think this would make a fascinating book for a book club discussion.

This was a quick and easy to read book with an engaging and thought-provoking Quantum Leap type plot.  The main character, known only as A, at first seemed like an extremely mature teenager who looked out for the best interests of the bodies he inhabited each day.  I felt sorry for him and the situation he was in, but he coped with it admirably, at least until he met Rhiannon.  He fell in love with her pretty much instantaneously, and while she seemed like a lovely girl, I guess I always have a hard time believing in love at first sight.  And then A's behavior turned stalker-ish, as he dedicated all his time trying to see Rhiannon again, ignoring the wishes of the bodies he was inhabiting at the time.  These tendencies seemed at odds with A's personality as it had been described at the beginning of the book.  The other complaint I had was that, in the two or three weeks the story covered, A inhabited an awful lot of people who had specific issues, like drug abuse, homosexuality, suicide, obesity, etc, and I felt like the author was using this as an opportunity to do a little preaching.  And finally, Rhiannon's reaction to trying to love A when he inhabited a completely different looking body each day seemed completely reasonable, and the fact that A didn't make an effort to understand that was completely unreasonable.

I know this review sounds primarily negative, but it really was a fun and easy book to read, and it made me think a lot.  So all in all, I did like it a lot.

Rating: 3.5 stars

No comments:

Post a Comment