published by: Knopf Books for Young Readers
publish date: August 28, 2012
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.
Every Day opens with A waking up in the body of Justin. Justin is Rhiannon's boyfriend. For the day, A is Rhiannon's boyfriend. Personally, I found Rhiannon to be rather unremarkable, but A fell in love with her and spends the rest of the book trying to get back to her.
Every morning A wakes up in a new body. There are a few rules. It's always a body of roughly the same age in within some geographical proximity to the last body A inhabited. The reasoning for why this happens is never explained, because A doesn't know.
Because the book is told from A's perspective we know what feelings A has for her and what memories and feelings of Justin's that A can access about her. So while A keeps insisting that Justin isn't good for Rhiannon we as readers don't know their whole story. There's the assumption that it's bad, but Justin does have his flashes of good qualities. So I was a little torn on the issue of Justin. In the end I thought it was probably better for Rhiannon to be with nobody at all and probably work on herself for awhile.
This was the first David Levithan book I've read and I was really impressed. I can see now why he has such a following. I will definitely be reading other books he's written. I don't see any need for any parental warnings on this book, I don't recall anything objectionable going on. Definitely a great YA read.
1 comment:
I am such a fan of David Levithan - I'm never disappointed (though, of course, there is a spectrum of "greatness," even within his works, which are all good!).
I really look forward to reading this one - it's an interesting premise. I just need to find the time!
Thanks for your thoughts.
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