"A" is a drifter that is neither male nor female. “A” wakes up each and every day in the body of a different person and has to figure out where he/she is by the person’s own memories. A is sixteen years old and therefore can only inhabit the body of a teenager of the same age. A can never be older or younger than sixteen.
Every day A realizes a different culture, a different life, a different way of living and has been doing so since A was born. One day A might be a girl, and the next a boy. A has been straight, gay, transgendered, African-American, White, and Asian. A has been a popular athlete as well as the downtrodden and overweight. I noticed that it seemed as though A was thoughtful towards each and every character except the overweight boy and the obnoxious and nasty girl. Then his/her way of thinking abruptly changed.
When A borrows the life of Justin for the day, little does A realize it but A's whole existence will change. It will change because A has fallen hard for Justin's girlfriend Rhiannon. For nearly a month, A will continue to have feelings for Rhiannon while continuing his every day body jumping. A’s determination to be with Rhiannon consumes A’s every waking moment and drives the storyline right until the breathtaking ending which I will never spoil. I also had problems with the fact that A strung Rhiannon along for the ride and never had any real thoughts of what it was doing to her psyche of the fact that she had friends who relied upon her to be around.
For A, borrowing someone’s life for a day is hard. It’s hard because there are times you wake up in a person’s body you don’t care about. You are likely to wake up in the body of an absolute snob, instead of someone like Rhiannon who seems to actually be a nice person. You also run into situations where the body you are in tends to afflict pain and suffering on itself in order to survive the day.
Up until I saw Every Day on NetGalley, I had never read anything by David Levithan. The premise sounded intriguing to me as well as something that I truly believe in. It shouldn’t matter what a person believes in. It shouldn’t matter what their skin color is, or the way they look on the outside, or whether they are gay or straight, transgender, or so called normal. Like Levithan says, humans are 98 percent similar yet they allow the 2 percent in differences to drive their hatreds and the way they deal with others around them.
I think readers will like A because of his/her code of not doing any harm to the body that he/she inhabits at the moment. “A” even goes as far as saving a girl from committing suicide in keeping with his motto of doing no harm. A also realizes that love is not a something for the faint of heart. It is ever lasting and comes in all shapes and colors.
Once you start reading this book, you will find yourself deep into the story and unable to put it down. I actually read this book in one sitting, minus a nap, and it flew by. The chapters are unique in that they are the actual day since A was born/created into this world. I can only hope that Levithan will one day rediscover A’s world and write a sequel so that readers like me won’t be left off balance by the shocking ending.
*Recvd 06/29/2012 via Netgalley.com Expected publication: August 28th 2012 by Knopf Books for Young Readers
Title - Every Day
Author - David Levithan
Publisher - Random House
Release Date - August 28, 2012
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