Every Day - David Levithan

Pages: 371

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Release Date: 29^th August 2013

Edition: UK paperback, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (with Rachel Cohn), Are We There Yet?, Wide Awake, Naomi & Eli’s No-Kiss List (with Rachel Cohn), Love is the Higher Law, Will Grayson, Will Grayson (with John Green), The Lover’s Dictionary, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares (with Rachel Cohn), Invisibility (with Andrea Cremer), Two Boys Kissing

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.

Each morning, A wakes up in a different body. There’s never any warning about who it will be, but A is used to that. Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

And that’s fine – until 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 – every day...

With every book of David Levithan’s that I read, I fall more and more in love with his writing, his ideas and his stories. Every Day was no exception.

There’s no doubt that Every Day is beautifully and thoughtfully written. There aren’t many protagonists that usually stand up to the weight of ideas and thought processes that Levithan doles out, but as usual, A did it perfectly. He is, after all, a soul and a mind, not a body. It made me think in a way I had never before: you are not your body. Your body is a casing; a way of presenting yourself to the world; the thing that defines how you will be viewed by the world, regardless of what lies underneath. It’s obviously something that you know but it’s a hard concept to grasp and really see until reading A’s story.

I loved the sense that each day is a single snapshot, to be endured or to be savoured; it’s either too long or too short. It made me reflect on my own days and I continually wish each one away, minute by minute to get to the end of my shift at work. It’ a depressing ways to spend your days, especially in comparison to A. A lives a different life in each day and spends nearly every day in the second half of the novel feeding his love for Rhiannon and trying to find a way to make it work.

One of the standout elements of Every Day is something that I’ve come to expect from David Levithan: a strong but still understated view of gender and sexuality. A is genderless; identifying as either a boy or a girl, depending on which body A appeared in that day. A doesn’t fall in love with girls or with boys, but with personalities; love is love. I really liked the way that Rhiannon struggled with this as she was so used to the more rigid and socially conforming view of gender and sexuality. It added a realistic and genuine edge to a novel that could have been ridiculous if written by anyone other than David Levithan.

I loved Every Day and already looking forward to seeking out more of David Levithan’s novels. It’s so good to fall in love with an author who has a backlist...

For my 2013 YA Contemporary Challenge

Thanks to Electric Monkey for sending me a copy to review.

Sophie