Hello Everyone!
ARC provided through Netgalley, Random House Children’s and Knopf Books for Young Readers in exchange for an honest review.
This is the second book in the Every Day duology by David Levithan. Due to my views on the book, and because it is a sequel, the entire review will be spoilers. You have been warned. If you are looking for my opinion of the book, I didn’t like it at all. Also, these are just my opinions. I have no problem with people who like these books. It is totally ok to have differing opinions. Take mine with a grain of salt.
*Spoilers*
I couldn’t stand this book. It might be the worst book I have read this year. Here is why:
Rhiannon and Justin’s relationship is abusive. Rhiannon even explains this in the beginning by saying that they love and hate each other equally. That is not ok. She is horribly treated by Justin, who is basically solely using her for sex. She has been in this relationship so much that she can’t say a sentence to him without having to put qualifiers or explanations onto the end of it as a way to make sure that she doesn’t have to spend time with Angry Justin. She is hanging on to Loving Justin, while being treated horribly by all of the other abusive facets of Justin, and she still says that she is love with him. She has the power to get out of the relationship. I know this is difficult from personal experience but she has the power to do it. She even acknowledges this while they are at the party, saying that she is trapped, but justifying the relationship by saying she is not as trapped as one of her friends. This isn’t the only instance of justification. Rhiannon is constantly justifying Justin’s actions. She is loving a version of Justin that doesn’t exist anymore. It isn’t pleasant to open most of the chapters from the beginning on with Rhiannon greeting Justin in the parking lot and Justin being a complete jerk to her.
Rhiannon is pining for love. I don’t know if you caught the subtle reference to Shakespeare’s Helena but it was there in the first 50 pages. Why? Because Helena spends most of A Midsummer Night’s Dream being played, treated horribly by those around her and pining after a boy that has no interest in her. It is like David Levithan wrote this version of Rhiannon without all of the sweet characteristics that she had in Every Day and then made her an even more annoying and clingy version of Helena. I didn’t want to read from her point of view and I didn’t really care about her at all. Also, the sections when she encounters A are almost exact copies of the conversations from his point of view. The reader doesn’t learn anything more from the conversations than they did the first time around.
None of the questions that the reader was left with at the end of the story were examined. This book could have been about the possibility of staying permanently in a body and a big battle between good and evil, but it wasn’t.
I really wanted to love this book. I wanted the sequel to be the one that I liked. I wanted to be able to report to the publisher that David Levithan had pulled out another fantastic book to add to his plethora of previous works. I can’t do that. I also can’t believe that I even finished this book because of how turned off I was when during the first 50 pages. I can’t wait to hear what the rest of the community thinks about the work when it is released later this week. I hope that, at the least, a discussion can be started from the problems that this book posed. I also pray that the audience this book is exposed to understands that a relationship that is like the one depicted in the story is not healthy. Justin’s behavior isn’t acceptable, Rhiannon is no longer a good role model and the book is not only not needed, in my opinion, but it could also be potentially detrimental.
Overall:
I don’t think that I can even give this a 1 star but Goodreads won’t allow me to place the book any lower.
-Jaime