Every Day

The premise was interesting, the pace was fast and I found it an addictive read but I guess that wasn't enough. When A falls in love with Rhiannon the story ends. It is just the two of them being all stalkery and cheesy and not romantic at all. I don't like romances in books because I think they are difficult to portray, your job is not to show me the love but to make me feel it and care for it. Here I didn't feel anything, A kinda forces his/her/insert here preferred pronoun presence upon Rhiannon and she is just passive to it.

I surely liked how the author wrote about sexuality and genders. The fact that A is genderless kinda tripped me for a while. I liked that we got to see many characters with different lives but I think that the obsessive thoughts about Rhiannon and love shaded their stories and I think they deserved to be told in more depth. It was a good chance to write about interesting issues and I think the author just wasted it.

Tiny little spoiler allert.
I hated the ending. I understand the author wanted to be poetic and wanted the two of them to fall asleep together and live like a normal couple for at least a day but Rhiannon had told A she needed some time on her own to overcome the feelings she still had for her ex. A, instead, thinks it is better if s/he finds Rhiannon a more suitable companion so she won't be alone when A will be gone. Because what says love more than a replacement of what you've once loved? Plus Rhainnon is going to wake up in the bed of a stranger, this stranger will only have fake memories of her. Isn't that creepy? Creepy and patronizing?

Oh, man.

I didn't think I was going to like it there for awhile.

A was such a careless person with a few of these peoples lives.

But that ending I loved.

And it was such a new story line. Very interesting. Many unanswered questions.

If you became someone different every day, could you still maintain a measure of self-identity? What makes us love? Is it possible to unconditionally love someone who looks different every day? Those are just some of the philosophical complexities of love, relationships and identity that Levithan explores in Every Day. It reflects and challenges the stereotypes and prejudices that are present in every day life, and will make you see your friends, family, and the people that you pass on the street in a new light.

Objectively speaking, this novel is beautifully written. A combination of thought-provoking subjects, such as drug addiction, sexuality, abuse and depression, and eloquent prose made for a thoroughly enjoyable read filled with memorable, moving quotes.

I highly recommend Every Day if you’re interested in an engaging read with a unique plot that will make you think and (possibly) change your worldview.

The ending of this book annoyed me. I wasn't very happy with it.

I was so excited to start this book, I had been hearing wonderful things about it and the premise sounded really interesting. I just wish that I liked it more than I did. This was a good book, don't get me wrong, but I think the thing that ruined it most for me was that my expectations were too high based on everything I heard. The storyline was still interesting, but I just couldn't dive in as much as I wanted to.

There were some issues I had with this. First off the way that A spoke. No teenager speaks the way he does. It was too mature for how old he was and I just couldn't believe it. If anything in a story should be believable it should be the main character. My next biggest issue was the serious case of instant love. A knew Rhiannon for maybe 6 hours and he knew he was in love with her? I think that is kind of forced. No way can anybody fall in love with someone after 6 or so hours. It just does not happen, you can't know anything about the person that has any substance at all.

The one part of this story I liked the best was the end. Not because it was over but because of how the story ended. I believe that A made the right choice in the end, both for Rhiannon and himself. I think the decision itself showed how much A cared about her because he knew he wouldn't be able to be what was needed.

While this story may not have been the one for me I will definitely be checking out another one of his books.

Totally made me want to read more of this authors books!

Every Day is very different to all the other books that I have ever read. It must be a sort of torture waking up in a different body everyday, never being able to find out who you truly are, as you adopt that person's personalities. It was really sad for A, as he was unable to love Rhiannon, as she was disgusted at times by the person he was inside. I was truly feeling for A, it must be so hard.

From what I gathered, I felt that A was a good person, even he did mess up some people's lives when he inhabited them. I was angry at him for destroying and upsetting people's lives, because he left them in a bit of a mess, like with Nathan and the boy in the library. To me, I felt like that A was a boy, by the way he talked, and how he loved Rhiannon who was a girl. I thought he rushed things a bit, but I guess it was because he he thought his time was limited, and it was.

The ending just didn't work with me. I thought the writer just slowly must of drifted off and decided they had better things to do and just finished it off. Maybe they could of just added more of a motive for A, like getting a real body, without destroying another's. If the writer put a little more effort in, then the story would of been perfect.

Every Day was a really great book at the start, then the plot was dragged out, but otherwise was perfect. This is a great book, and I think that people should give it a try.

This is a great book! There are no other ways to put it, it is just great!

First, the positives. Every Day definitely kept my interest. I was never bored, and I thought his prose had a nice simple flow to it. The concept was indeed both original and interesting, and I kind of liked that, like A, we never really figure out why he* jumps from body to body each day. It's just a mystery that A has come to accept, and therefore we have to accept it too. Which kind of diffuses the paranormal aspect of the book, since A really isn't interested in why he jumps bodies every day. I thought it was kind of neat to have a paranormal-esque book where the protagonist really wasn't very interested in finding out anything about the paranormal aspect. He just accepted it and moved on.

I liked Rhiannon, the girl A falls in love with. She felt infuriatingly real to me, in that occasionally she'd act like a real person instead of being a neat and tidy fictional character and that was bothersome (like when she insisted on sticking with her deadbeat boyfriend).

Unfortunately, here's where my positives end. While I liked Rhiannon, I didn't love her, and I couldn't see anything extraordinary about her that caused A to fall in love with her during his one day inhabiting the body of her boyfriend. Certainly nothing that would provoke the stalker-like behavior that he started exhibiting afterward.

And then there was A. The premise of the book is, "can you truly love someone who is destined to change every day?" And while I think exploring the answer to that question is interesting, the problem with this book's way of exploring it is that A did not seem to be a character worth that sort of transcendental love. He's kind of flat. He doesn't have much in the way of personality. He's not particularly funny. Yet Rhiannon tries really hard to make things work between them, and I don't understand why. To make that sort of sacrifice in a relationship, I'd think the other person would have to have a spectacularly awesome personality to get past the physical weirdness, and A just doesn't. He's obsessive and intellectual and kind of judgmental and not all that amusing. It almost makes me wonder if the fact that Rhiannon is inherently a good person, combined with the intrigue of the body switching, is why she attempts to make things work with A at all. Because contrary to how many times they insist it is his sparkling personality, I just don't see it.

Then we get to the book's subplot, where one of A's daily hosts catches on to him and makes it his mission in life to figure out who/what A is and expose him to the world. And seriously, this annoyed me so much. Not just the fact that A dismissed the character's obsession to find out who had taken over his body for a day as inconsequential and unhealthy. A tends to be extremely un-empathetic and self-involved, so I could look past the fact that he thought being, essentially, possessed for a day should be no big deal to someone else. But on top of that, every foray into this subplot felt like a poorly placed and ill-informed jest at the Christian community, which I didn't appreciate. Are there crazies in the world, Christian and otherwise? You betcha. But the way this book handled the whole situation left a bad taste in my mouth.

And speaking of things that left a bad taste in my mouth, let's talk for a minute about the main plot of the book: the "romance" between A and Rhiannon. First of all, Rhiannon seems like a reluctant participant the entire time, which makes me not really want to root for this romance (especially since I already liked her more than A). Second, A is dismissive and condescending about her concerns, which are legitimate and serious. Every time he suspects that maybe her hesitation is in any way tied to the body he's in, he's disappointed in her. Not in the hand they were dealt. In her. Which completely discounts the role physical attraction plays in romance. And while I don't think romance based solely on physical attraction is healthy, I also don't think one should completely disregard the role physical attraction plays in romantic relationships. Beauty is most definitely in the eye of the beholder, and different appearances appeal to different people, but the fact that he seemed to look down on her any time he suspected she may not be physically attracted to the body he was currently inhabiting bothered me immensely.

Now, I understand that because A does not have a physical body of his own, he has taught himself to believe that the physical self doesn't really matter. It's kind of a self-preservation mechanism. So in terms of the character, I can understand why he thinks that way.

But the way he expresses his views throughout the book seemed heavy-handed and unreasonable to me, and once again, I found it hard to root for him.

Now, lots of people have complained about the end of the book. This is one thing I actually didn't have a problem with. No, it's not a storybook ending. But it felt like a good conclusion to the story of A and Rhiannon, and while maybe it wasn't entirely satisfying, I thought it was appropriate. So on that front, I have no complaints.

Overall, I give it an A for originality, but a D for characters and connection. I know I'm in the vast minority here, as most of the reviews I've read indicate that readers were sobbing and heartbroken over this book. I wanted to be among them, truly I did, but in the end, I remained unmoved.

*I refer to him as "he," because although he thinks of himself as genderless, his voice sounded extremely male to me. Plus, we first meet him as a guy, and you know what they say about first impressions

A lives the loneliest of existences, living a life that’s really not his at all. You see, each day A wakes up in the body of a different person, never knowing which race, gender, religious affiliation, or type of person he’ll be from one day to the next and at midnight, he’ll be pulled from that body and transported to the next. It’s been this way for as long as he can remember and his biggest struggles of the day are to remain in that person’s body, living their life as they would live it, without raising too much suspicion from those around him- parents, siblings, friends, significant others- that anything is different, that for this one single day, that person is anyone other than themselves. He has questions about his life, but is pretty resigned to the fact that things are the way they are and nothing can be done about it. A is meticulous in his efforts, never imposing his will on his host’s thoughts, never interfering in their lives, until one day he wakes up as Justin. After meeting Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon, suddenly he’s making mistakes he’s never made before and wishing against all hope that he existed in a single body and never had to say goodbye again.

“Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.”

I was drawn to this book immediately by its original premise, the ability to live your life each day essentially as a new person. I can say I’ve had this thought often enough, wondered what it would be like to be recreated over and over again; the possibilities are endless. I love the way that the author wove this tale, such creativity in creating all these people and the lives that went with each person. I enjoyed getting to know them all, their quirks and flaws, what made them who they were and the experiences that A was able to receive from being in their body for a single twenty-four-hour period. The knowledge he is able to access from seeing the world through a different pair of eyes (or in the case of a blind girl he was at one time, other senses) each day is almost unfathomable.

I also liked the embedded message within, about love at it’s most basic form. Do people really fall in love with someone’s soul, their very being, or regardless of how much we wish to deny it happens, are our emotions- our love- tied to how we view a person? Does it matter that a person is of a certain gender or race, does altering that person’s appearance really alter how you would feel about them in the end? I think we’d all like to think of ourselves as being able to love free of judgement and not be superficial, but is that truly possible? To be honest, I don’t know if I woke up to my husband as a woman one day how I would feel about that, and it has nothing to do with being attracted to a certain sex or not. I mean, the rational part of me wants to say that I’d love him no matter what, but like Rhiannon addresses so very often in the story, who and how we love a person is often tied to the images and memories we have of them. Yes, love goes beyond skin deep for most people, but doesn’t seeing the same skin over a period of time tie into the love that we feel? This story is definitely one that makes you think.

Without a doubt, Mr. Levithan has the effortless ability to captivate his readers from the beginning of the story and to tether their emotions to each page with his tender, real-to-life prose and charismatic way of storytelling. I fell into the story easily and found myself enthralled with this heartbreaking journey of these two people trying to defy the odds and find true love.

I wanted to love this story; I wanted to believe in this teen romance. I wanted to pull for them, to wish for them to navigate the complications of this type of love, and find a compatible rhythm that meant they could exist in one another’s life each and every day, but… I couldn’t. It was hard for connect to A’s infatuation and almost insta-love for Rhiannon. I just couldn’t understand it. After existing for almost 6,000 days, always being so careful, what was it about this one girl that made him want to disrupt all these other people’s lives for her? Rhiannon’s hesitation about it all, and her slow-building attraction for him and her never-ending questions, was the only thing that kept this romance somewhat believable for me.

I also struggled with the side-story that was Daniel’s quest to find out who inhabited his body for a day. He was the one exception to the rule, a person that felt he was “possessed” after A slipped up because his thoughts are too consumed with finding ways to be with Rhiannon. I can only conclude that his sole purpose in the book was to be the loophole to finding out about Reverend Poole and the possibility of other’s with A’s “situation.” More often than not, I became aggravated with his part in the story, and felt like it was more of a distraction from the romance than an integral part of the plot.

As much as I enjoyed this novel, in the end, I found it wasn’t enough for me. In general, I’m not a big fan of “falling down the rabbit hole.” In some cases, I can deal with being left with the big unknown, but in this case I needed more answers. The more I read, the less it became about the journey, and the more it became about the destination. Why was this happening to A? Were there truly others like him? What gender was he/she (it?) born as and where are the birth parents? How does Rhiannon’s story unfold after A left her, and do they every find love– together, separately? So. MANY. Questions. Reading this story was like watching LOST (If you haven’t ever seen this show, just ignore the next part.). At the beginning I watched it because I enjoyed it. Then I watched it because I needed to know what was going on and why they were on the island ? Finally, I gave up in the middle of the very last season because my brain couldn’t deal with all the mind-screwing that was going on and the frustration ruined it all for me.

Levithan’s writing capability was never a matter of questioning. I’ve heard of his books before this, and he definitely has a way with words, so I doubt this will be the last book of his I read. If I had the assurance that there was going to be a companion novel or even a series that guaranteed me answers, I probably would’ve even rated this Every Day higher and enjoyed it more. But I don’t have those; therefore, I felt like I only received half of a story. If you’re a person who can appreciate wonderful storytelling and revel in the journey of a book, then this one is for you. However, if you’re like me and need to have the answers and general closure at the end, I might would wait to see if Mr. David Levithan has anything else up is sleeve in regards to this book.

*An e-galley of this title was provided by Random House Children’s Books via Net Galley.