Book Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Every Day by David Levithan 

(Goodreads)

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. 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.

I'll be honest, I'm a huge sucker for Buzzfeed's endless lists of random information. One day I succumbed and gave them my email for a newsletter and that's more or less how I came across Every Day by David Levithan. In a list of 27 Seriously Underrated Books Every Book Lover Should Read, a reader gushed about this book and said,

"It’s an amazing read about identity and who one truly is. The main character changes bodies each day, so you never know what will happen." 

(If you click on the link you might notice a lot of those books I've reviewed, so I guess this list had more of an influence on me than I realized.)

So, changing bodies everyday? That premise definitely intrigued me. I wondered, how will this work? Will I just be reading about different lives or will they somehow all connect like Alejandro González Iñárritu's Babel? (Great film btw!!) However, the last thing I expected from Every Day was a romance and that's completely on me because I didn't read the entire summary. I know, I know, but I was excited to read this, ok??

But alas, a romance is what I got. I wouldn't say I disliked it but I had a problem with A's infatuation with Rhiannon, who he meets when he inhabits her boyfriend's body. It just didn't seem realistic, I couldn't understand why A felt so much for this girl he didn't know. Do I believe in love at first sight? Not in real life, at least not yet, but in literature? LOVE IT. So in this case, it just didn't work for me. I didn't see why I (or A) should care about this girl, out of all the thousands of people they've met in their lives, she definitely didn't stand out. It wasn't until later that I began to appreciate Rhiannon's character. She had her flaws, yes, but she seemed like a good match for A.

What I enjoyed more about Every Day was catching glimpses into other people's lives and the different experiences that A had. I almost feel like David Levithan could have done more with this plot; I felt disappointed in the end by what felt like loose ends.

I apologize for a lack of a memorable quote. While I had a good handful to choose from, the page numbers were lost in an infinity of scribbles.