Book Review: Every Day by David Levithan
Feb. 28th, 2017 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Every Day (Every Day Book 1)
Author: David Levithan
Narrator: Alex McKenna
Published: Listening Library, 2012
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 206,885
Text Number: 630
Read Because: personal enjoyment/interest in agender protagonists, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Every day, A wakes in the body of a different teenager. But when they fall in love with a host's girlfriend, they're tempted for the first time to form a relationship that lasts beyond one day. I was expecting an interesting speculative concept overshadowed by a romance, but like Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, the romance—while not itself convincing—functions as a vehicle to explore the rules of A's body hopping and the way it shapes their worldview and defines their social interactions. I wasn't expecting (although it seems obvious in retrospect) a meta-problem novel. The variety of sexual orientations is authentic; gender identity is explored via clumsy language but with good intentions. But the presentation of mental illness, addiction, disability, even fatness has the artless exaggeration of a YA social problem novel, an effect exacerbated by the limited role those lives play in the narrative after A has vacated them and by A's smug platitudes. Every Day is a compelling effort, thanks mostly to its premise, but it's also cringe-inducing; I can't separate those two effects, or recommend the book.
Author: David Levithan
Narrator: Alex McKenna
Published: Listening Library, 2012
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 350
Total Page Count: 206,885
Text Number: 630
Read Because: personal enjoyment/interest in agender protagonists, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Every day, A wakes in the body of a different teenager. But when they fall in love with a host's girlfriend, they're tempted for the first time to form a relationship that lasts beyond one day. I was expecting an interesting speculative concept overshadowed by a romance, but like Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife, the romance—while not itself convincing—functions as a vehicle to explore the rules of A's body hopping and the way it shapes their worldview and defines their social interactions. I wasn't expecting (although it seems obvious in retrospect) a meta-problem novel. The variety of sexual orientations is authentic; gender identity is explored via clumsy language but with good intentions. But the presentation of mental illness, addiction, disability, even fatness has the artless exaggeration of a YA social problem novel, an effect exacerbated by the limited role those lives play in the narrative after A has vacated them and by A's smug platitudes. Every Day is a compelling effort, thanks mostly to its premise, but it's also cringe-inducing; I can't separate those two effects, or recommend the book.
