Every Day by David Levithan

Every Day by David Levithan

Release Date: August 28, 2012
Publisher: Ember
Series: Every Day, Book 1
Rated: YA 14+
Format: Paperback
Source: Borrowed from sister
Buy: Amazon ● The Book Depository
Goodreads ● Website

Read my review of Six Earlier Days HERE

I wake up.

Immediately, I have to figure out who I am. It's not just the body - opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I'm fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you're used to waking up in a new one each morning. It's the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.

Every day I am someone else. I am myself - I know I am myself - but I am also someone else.

It has always been like this.

To be completely honest, I was a little afraid of going into this book. A few of my friends hated it. There were quite a few so-so reviews. My sister disliked it (although she constantly fluctuates between loving it and hating it, so...). I decided to pick up Every Day after receiving an advanced copy of Another Day, the companion novel, for review. This book had been blurbed by so many awesome people that I thought that it was time to finally pick this one up, this book that has been haunting so many top lists yet is one that everyone says fell flat. So yeah, I finally read it.

And I loved it.

I will admit: I’ve had a bit of a blind spot for books that were not-so-great but I made out to be greater-than-it-actually-was in the past. I know my radar is getting a bit better, as I’ve become more confident with voicing my opinions on books that I didn’t like. But this book? I’ve fallen hopelessly in love. I’d only read one of Levithan’s books before this one, which was Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares (review here), one of his collaborations with Rachel Cohn. While I did like it, Every Day was something different.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around how A’s existence. A is neither a girl nor a guy, A is the person that “it” inhabits. I loved this because A could be literally anybody and nobody at the same time. A holds onto little things but generally lets go of the memories gained from each body’s experience. I seriously felt like crying after reading some of A’s experiences, especially with love. It was beautiful to see that A could fall in love with anyone–regardless of gender–because of the people A inhibits. It feels like though most of the time that A was more a guy than a girl. Probably tone of voice? I don’t know. It’s also probably because A falls in love with Rhiannon, a girlfriend of one of the bodies occupied by A, and since it’s a guy’s body, that’s maybe why I associate A with being more of a guy than a girl. But it was pretty cool to see a character that’s androgynous.

I know some people who didn’t like the book’s end because it ends kind of with an uncertain future for both A and Rhiannon. I’m hoping that some of it will be explained in Another Day, but my sister took a peek at the end of the book and was frustrated with how the sequel ends as well. I actually liked the ending to Every Day because you have enough of an end for closure, but not enough that it’s final. It would have been great to get a tiny bit more information, but it still was quite a powerful ending.

A beautiful and heartbreaking story about an ephemeral life and living out every day, David Levithan’s novel was a remarkable read. Every Day beat my expectations by a mile–it made me laugh and it brought me close to tears. All I can say now is that I can’t wait to read Another Day and look at this story from Rhiannon’s point of view, as well as read more from this wonderful author who truly is one of the best writers in young adult fiction.

If you like this, try...

• Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith ● Goodreads
• Looking for Alaska by John Green ● Goodreads
• Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork ● Goodreads

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