Book Review: Every Day



Ever wake up and feel like you’re someone else? You roll out of bed, feel off your game, and you don’t recognize that person in the mirror with severe bedhead.

But for 16-year-old “A,” in David Levithan’s Every Day, that literally happens every morning: he (we assume A’s a he; but A has been both male and female) wakes up in another 16-year-old body. Gay and straight, rich and poor, black, white, Asian and Hispanic--A has been them all. Because A leaves his host when he goes to bed that night, he tries not to interact much with those around him. Until he wakes up in the body of Justin, and falls in love with Justin’s self-conscious but kind girlfriend Rhiannon. Now all of A’s rules about not getting attached go out the window, and he does whatever it takes to be with her, every day, no matter what body he’s in, no matter how far he has to travel. It requires his hosts doing and saying things they don’t normally do—and a slip-up one evening risks exposing who and what he is in a very big way.

Every Day is one of the more unique stories I have read in a while, and it provides food for thought: Can you still love a person for what he/she really is on the inside, even when what's on the outside is always changing? A and Rhiannon's struggle to make it work tugs at your heartstrings and makes you root for the impossible to become, somehow, someday, some way, possible.

Deb B.
CC Library