Book Title: Every Day
Author: David Levithan
Date Started: February 9th 2014
Date Completed: February 16th 2014
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Fantasy
Rating: Three stars
Review:
To be honest, I'd rate Every Day at 2.5 stars, because I don't think it's worth three stars, but it'd be too harsh to give it two. For me, Every Day was dominated by themes and story lines I didn't care about, while concepts I would've been really interested in where sidelined and forgotten. I think this book had such potential, but just didn't get there for me.
A wakes up in a different body every single day. He doesn't know where he comes from, if there is anyone else out there like him, or why he leaps from person to person daily. So he takes every day as it comes, keeping to rules to not interfere; living as a different person for one day. But then one day he wakes up as Justin. And he meets Rhiannon. And he can't keep to his rules anymore.
I didn't see anything remarkable about the writing, however it was perfectly fine. It's quite easy reading, so you can focus on the story a lot more. Also, there's a lot of inner monologue, as A has to work out everything about his host's life each morning in order to live as them for 24 hours.
I think the best thing about the whole book is the way everyday issues were dealt with. As A changes bodies every day, it gives the opportunity to present loads of different characters. This worked really well, since the target audience for this book is teenagers. The inclusion of issues such as gay/lesbian relationships, transgender individuals and depression was one of the things that made me appreciate this book a little bit more. They were dealt with honestly and openly, presenting a realistic flare to the story.
When I first heard about this book, I thought it sounded intriguing and had the potential to have a contemporary love story, as well as a more dangerous undertone. Unfortunately, the latter was pretty much crushed by the relationships.
Firstly, I didn't care that much about the love side of the story, as both the main characters got on my nerves a little. To have this destroy a part of the story I enjoyed reading was the final straw for me.
I was really interested when one of A's previous hosts remembered something and started spreading it around, because it presented problems for A. Although limitations on how A's ability worked were mentioned, they were never really demonstrated (e.g. he could only jump into the body of someone in the same state?). We were told the potential dangers, but A never seemed to have trouble avoiding them. (Also, nothing is ever really explained to us as to why this is all happening or how it does.)
Consequently, what did happen in the story became really repetitive. I understand that A has to wake up to a new body every morning and work out everything etc etc, but surely there could have been some way to make it a little different every time we read it?
The end of the story was too unexplained for me. There's so many things left unsolved. This does kind of annoy me, since there's clearly another book planned to carry on from this, but I don't have a desire to read it, yet there's still so many answers I want to have.
Overall, I just feel like the wrong things were focused on throughout the whole book.
This is a very character-based story. I feel like each body A moved to was different and interesting, but as the reader we didn't really learn that much about them because A was always so hung up on Rhiannon and how far away he was from her etc.
A is supposedly a good person. And his monologues support this. His actions, however, don't always. Pretty much as soon as you start the book, you start it with a version of A that already loves Rhiannon, and wants to go out of his way to see her. It's a little hard to believe he's so careful when we only see him being reckless and messing up other people's lives. I understand he has to think or himself, as well as his host, but it just didn't fit with what he was always saying. In that respect, although he seemed nice enough, he acted stupid, but still made good decisions in his head. I just had a hard time working out how that would work in real life.
Rhiannon started off nice, but eventually started to get on my nerves halfway through the book. I think she was being unfair to A, and A was being unfair to her, and they talked like they knew that, but acted like they didn't. It just didn't seem to work. (Slight spoiler) Also, the hints that she was slightly homophobic and judgmental were never resolved or brought up other than when they happened.
I loved Nathan from when A inhabited him. And although he did become a threat after that, I still liked his character because it added a bit of suspense to the story. But he just faded into the background because the love story was considered more important.
Even for a contemporary book, I found the pace of this novel slow. The repetition of what happened at the beginning of every chapter didn't really help either. (I don't care how many hours away you are from Rhiannon, what about this person's life and what you should do to not mess it up?)
But then, near the end, everything started getting very fast, and little details were lost. It all seemed rushed, and then the conclusion jumps up out of blue. It was quite strange in my opinion, but to be fair I had given up on the book by that time, so I'm probably being a little harsh.
I would recommend this book to people that like reading love stories. I'm not a huge fan of books that only include romance, but I'm aware some people do like that. If that's the case, I think you'd really like Every Day. I was just expecting something different and was disappointed when I didn't get it.
Image Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeYOgaYQSIN_Au-X9PLdL6kEWwOWU7Oe6zIH87R9EkM3J16oCyyJA01TyIZNXCVZTOZukEYutY6CjOdhQcpR96B_TrmDE_LLlmzgBPkigRQV8D3hyphenhyphenDxLFSVsFOwmoOTRDubbQEp0N5PA/s400/every+day.jpg
To be honest, I'd rate Every Day at 2.5 stars, because I don't think it's worth three stars, but it'd be too harsh to give it two. For me, Every Day was dominated by themes and story lines I didn't care about, while concepts I would've been really interested in where sidelined and forgotten. I think this book had such potential, but just didn't get there for me.
A wakes up in a different body every single day. He doesn't know where he comes from, if there is anyone else out there like him, or why he leaps from person to person daily. So he takes every day as it comes, keeping to rules to not interfere; living as a different person for one day. But then one day he wakes up as Justin. And he meets Rhiannon. And he can't keep to his rules anymore.
I didn't see anything remarkable about the writing, however it was perfectly fine. It's quite easy reading, so you can focus on the story a lot more. Also, there's a lot of inner monologue, as A has to work out everything about his host's life each morning in order to live as them for 24 hours.
I think the best thing about the whole book is the way everyday issues were dealt with. As A changes bodies every day, it gives the opportunity to present loads of different characters. This worked really well, since the target audience for this book is teenagers. The inclusion of issues such as gay/lesbian relationships, transgender individuals and depression was one of the things that made me appreciate this book a little bit more. They were dealt with honestly and openly, presenting a realistic flare to the story.
When I first heard about this book, I thought it sounded intriguing and had the potential to have a contemporary love story, as well as a more dangerous undertone. Unfortunately, the latter was pretty much crushed by the relationships.
Firstly, I didn't care that much about the love side of the story, as both the main characters got on my nerves a little. To have this destroy a part of the story I enjoyed reading was the final straw for me.
I was really interested when one of A's previous hosts remembered something and started spreading it around, because it presented problems for A. Although limitations on how A's ability worked were mentioned, they were never really demonstrated (e.g. he could only jump into the body of someone in the same state?). We were told the potential dangers, but A never seemed to have trouble avoiding them. (Also, nothing is ever really explained to us as to why this is all happening or how it does.)
Consequently, what did happen in the story became really repetitive. I understand that A has to wake up to a new body every morning and work out everything etc etc, but surely there could have been some way to make it a little different every time we read it?
The end of the story was too unexplained for me. There's so many things left unsolved. This does kind of annoy me, since there's clearly another book planned to carry on from this, but I don't have a desire to read it, yet there's still so many answers I want to have.
Overall, I just feel like the wrong things were focused on throughout the whole book.
This is a very character-based story. I feel like each body A moved to was different and interesting, but as the reader we didn't really learn that much about them because A was always so hung up on Rhiannon and how far away he was from her etc.
A is supposedly a good person. And his monologues support this. His actions, however, don't always. Pretty much as soon as you start the book, you start it with a version of A that already loves Rhiannon, and wants to go out of his way to see her. It's a little hard to believe he's so careful when we only see him being reckless and messing up other people's lives. I understand he has to think or himself, as well as his host, but it just didn't fit with what he was always saying. In that respect, although he seemed nice enough, he acted stupid, but still made good decisions in his head. I just had a hard time working out how that would work in real life.
Rhiannon started off nice, but eventually started to get on my nerves halfway through the book. I think she was being unfair to A, and A was being unfair to her, and they talked like they knew that, but acted like they didn't. It just didn't seem to work. (Slight spoiler) Also, the hints that she was slightly homophobic and judgmental were never resolved or brought up other than when they happened.
I loved Nathan from when A inhabited him. And although he did become a threat after that, I still liked his character because it added a bit of suspense to the story. But he just faded into the background because the love story was considered more important.
Even for a contemporary book, I found the pace of this novel slow. The repetition of what happened at the beginning of every chapter didn't really help either. (I don't care how many hours away you are from Rhiannon, what about this person's life and what you should do to not mess it up?)
But then, near the end, everything started getting very fast, and little details were lost. It all seemed rushed, and then the conclusion jumps up out of blue. It was quite strange in my opinion, but to be fair I had given up on the book by that time, so I'm probably being a little harsh.
I would recommend this book to people that like reading love stories. I'm not a huge fan of books that only include romance, but I'm aware some people do like that. If that's the case, I think you'd really like Every Day. I was just expecting something different and was disappointed when I didn't get it.
Image Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPeYOgaYQSIN_Au-X9PLdL6kEWwOWU7Oe6zIH87R9EkM3J16oCyyJA01TyIZNXCVZTOZukEYutY6CjOdhQcpR96B_TrmDE_LLlmzgBPkigRQV8D3hyphenhyphenDxLFSVsFOwmoOTRDubbQEp0N5PA/s400/every+day.jpg
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