Basically, I'm a dafty who fell and managed to somehow damage a ligament in my knee which is extremely painful and considerably inconvenient. But anything for an excuse to procrastinate, right?
Anyway, I have a lot of work to get through this afternoon, to make up for spending most of yesterday in the hospital and taking forever to get up and dressed and out to the polling station to vote today! But since I'm at home and in a pretty good mood all things considered, I thought I'd put it off just a tiny bit longer and review the book I read last week.
So, I've been trying to read a few pages of a book for pleasure every evening before bed. Whether I've been studying, or Netflix-ing or social media-ing beforehand, I like to finish every day with a little bit of light reading. This seemed liked a really good plan until I started study leave and realised that when I get really into a book there's very little stopping me from blowing off studying plans and spending all day reading for pleasure! Which may have been what happened on a couple of occasions last week ...
I bought this book in a wee haul I did from Amazon last summer. I got excited about all the free time I'd have when I broke up from uni and Amazon were running a '3 for £10' deal on books and I couldn't resist! As usual, I never got round to actually reading the books at the time, but recently Carrie Hope Fletcher mentioned in a live stream or vlog that 'Every Day' was a good book, and I remembered that I had a copy so decided to put it next on my list.
I knew that I liked David Levithan as an author from reading 'Will Grayson, Will Grayson' which was a collaborative effort between him and John Green, but I wasn't expecting to get so hooked so quickly!
Brief Summary: A wakes up each morning in a different body. It's always someone the same age and in the same rough area, but it's someone knew every day. Then, in the body of a 16 year old named Justin, A spends a day with Justin's girlfriend Rhiannon, and suddenly has a reason to want to end this strange lifestyle. As A juggles these new feelings, A must simultaneously deal with the fact that someone may have caught on to this big secret. While the initial concept seems to simple, there are so many wee details that could have created major plot flaws in the novel, but David Levithan brilliantly addresses just about every question. In addition, I wondered to begin with how he would manage to make this one concept span an entire book, but he does!
In order to do so, two or more very major moments in the life of A, which appears to otherwise have been rather uneventful (apart from the causal swapping of lives on a daily basis, of course!) had to occur all of a sudden and at the same time. It did cross my mind that this was just a little too coincidental, but to be honest it was so skilfully done that some artistic license can be afforded!
Thanks to the set up of the characters and plotline, Levithan created the flexibility for himself to deal with a number of big issues, particularly sexuality and gender and to what extent these things define our lives. I knew Levithan to be the type of YA author to address such issues from previous experience, which was why I also wasn't surprised at how well he did so. Without it being to forced, without to much cliché or cringe, without sounding preachy, he brought to the light the normality of diversity and I imagine brought lot of confidence to many young readers.
This book reinforces the notion that we can love someone just for being them and (no spoilers!) that we won't always get the fairy-tale ending, but we can learn to prioritise in order to make the best of a situation. It also touched on a broader theme I've often written about on here recently: labels. When I began the book, I immediately assumed the A was male (I even struggled not to use 'he' and 'him' in this post). Why? I don't know, A's gender is never explicitly stated and that soon became clear to me. But that fact struck a chord with me in the sense that I was reminded of the human obsession with labelling.
My only other small criticism of this book was that, while I liked that each chapter was a new day of A's life, Levithan talks at length about some days and barely scrapes the surface of others which means that the chapters vary drastically in length and its therefore hard to know how long I'd need to keep reading to get ton the end of one (I preferably like to read books in chapters, as in not stop mid-chapter if I can help it!). However, this really is just a tiny thing, and to have even-lengthed chapters would have totally ruined the effect of the narrative structure.
Overall, a brilliant book that is highly addictive! My friend, who also loved this book, informed me that there is a second one which is the same story but from Rhiannon's perspective, and so guess what I ordered this afternoon, since it's pay day?!
Right, I need to stop distracting myself from revision with fiction, no matter how good it is!
Catriona x
Reading Challenge: 4/21
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