Hello, Everyone!
Welcome to day one of the Booktubeathon and the second day of the Summer Bibib! I hope that you are all doing well and accomplishing your goals for whatever readathon (or a mix of whatever readathon) you are trying to conquer this week. In anticipation of the Booktubeathon starting today, I finished the last book that I was currently reading, which was Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, so that I could start fresh when the readathon started. Luckily, the challenge for the Summer Bibib today was to review a book, so I have an excuse to sit down, take a break from reading and take the time to review it right away.
I have some complicated feelings on Everything, Everything. If any of you follow me on Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/imwaitingforthetardis), you will see that I rated the book four stars. So Jaime, how can you have such complicated feelings about a book that you rated so highly? Well, that is the complicated part. I feel like this review is best done in two sections, pros and cons. These sections are also really long, but bear with me.
What I liked:
The love story. I am not one for instalove books (and I am going to be honest and say that this book is straight up instalove. Madeline falls for the first boy that she sees and then obsesses over him like he is her one and only stars and moon for the rest of the book. She is also under the impression that because she likes Olly she know understands the entirety and vastness of the thing called love. Which she does not. Obviously.). I don’t find the “love at first sight” trope believable and instalove is usually very annoying. However, I did find Olly and Maddie adorable together, so I was able to look past how instalovey the whole relationship was. I liked Olly because he was caring and rational. He was genuinely concerned for Maddie’s health during a lot of the book, even after he got to close to her in the sunroom. He knew that he crossed the line and was scared that she was going to get sick. I also commended the way that Olly treated Maddie during the sex scene (because it is surprisingly rare to see a consensual sex scene between two teenagers in books in YA. It is awful, but true. Also, yes there is a sex scene. I did roll my eyes because the end of the scene is just eye roll worthy. However, it was clear that both parties gave verbal consent and, that even though Olly was much more mature than Maddie, he wasn’t pushing her to do anything she wasn’t comfortable with/didn’t want to do.) I while I liked ¾ of Maddie’s character, I liked all of Olly’s character.
The side characters. I loved Carla! She is an amazing woman and she is one of the most supportive mother type side characters that I have read recently. She is wise, funny, kind hearted and incredibly good for both Maddie and her mother. I also liked Olly’s friend from Hawaii, although I did think that it was weird to introduce him for such a short amount of time. He was really less of a developed character and more of a plot device, but I enjoyed the amount of him that we were given.
The twists. I enjoyed both of the twists, although I believe that Maddie’s heart attack was my favorite twist. Personally, I didn’t see it coming that she wasn’t sick, even though I know a lot of people did. I have more to say about this in the section about what I didn’t like, so I’ll talk more about it there, but it made for a compelling book.
The writing style and design. I really enjoyed Nicola Yoon’s writing style. I think that it was interesting, super quick and easy to read. I loved all of the pictures and different things that were in the book. I almost listed to this book on audiobook and while the narrator is great, I am glad that I got a physical copy to be able to see all of the pictures. I also enjoyed holding the book up to a mirror to read the writing on the windows.
What I didn’t like.
How alcoholism and abuse was handled in the novel. Firstly, I would like to point out that nowhere on the internet, in the movie reviews, or anywhere else did I see that Olly’s dad was an abusive alcoholic. This is a very important plot point and a plot point that can be triggering to many. The fact that I didn't see it mentioned anywhere is astounding. I feel like I brought this up in my “Triggers, Spoilers and Fantastic Beasts” article that I wrote last fall, but it is important that someone mentions the triggering aspects of a novel so that individuals don’t go into a book (especially one like Everything, Everything where all you seem to hear about it is that it is a light hearted contemporary) and become blindsided by a triggering subplot.
Secondly, I didn’t feel like alcoholism or abuse fit in this story. Alcoholism in particular is an incredibly complex physical and mental disease that affects thousands of people directly and indirectly all across the globe. It was shown through a very specific lens in Everything, Everything. Olly’s dad is shown excessively drinking throughout the novel, as well as hitting or yelling at his family members. In one scene, Olly mentions the progression of his father’s disease. Olly says his father used to drink less and that his parents once sat him and his sister down after his father first slapped his mother in order to apologize. However, his father isn’t given any more dimension beyond Olly’s explanation. Olly doesn’t really talk about his feelings either. He tries to talk to Maddie about his experiences while they are in Hawaii on the beach, but their conversation divulges into a conversation about “what you would do for love”. Eventually we see Olly, his mother and sister move away, but the reason is rushed and vague. I understand that the story that Nicola Yoon was trying to tell wasn’t about Olly’s father or his life. It wasn’t really about Olly’s family either. However, due to the complexity of alcoholism as a mental and physical disease, due to how little time was spent on explaining the complexity of Olly’s situation/the tumultuous emotions that he was experiencing by living with someone with alcoholism who was abusive, and because I feel like Nicola Yoon was just trying to pick something that had weight enough for the reader to empathize with Olly’s home life, I believe that the themes of alcoholism and abuse needed to be removed or replaced from Everything, Everything. Yoon could have accomplished the same thing that she was trying to do with Olly’s father’s disease (create a reason for both the reader and Maddie to empathize with Olly and his situation) by instead creating a vague reason for Olly’s parents to have a tumultuous marriage. A more vague reason for Olly’s parent’s conflict would have provided the same impact of a complicated and torn home life for Olly while matching the overall tone of Yoon’s novel better. I also feel like having a vaguely tumultuous relationship for Olly’s parent’s would cause less people to be triggered, while also causing less readers to focus on the specifics of why Olly’s home life is bad (which we are really never given by Yoon anyway) and allow them to focus on what Yoon really wants to reader to be focusing on; Olly and Maddie’s relationship.
How Maddie’s Mom’s mental illness was treated.
The “twist” at the end of Everything, Everything is one of the things that I have the most complex feelings about. I do feel like, in many ways, Maddie’s feelings towards her mom, including her anger, are justified. Her mom has kept her away from the world and even though Maddie still has much of her life left to live, there are childhood experiences that she will never be able to get back/recreate. She will also be permanently burdened by the weight of growing up secluded from the world. I am not asking Maddie to have forgiven her mom right away and I am acknowledging both the weight of Maddie’s situation and the complex emotions that she is experiencing.
With all of that said….
Maddie’s mother has a serious mental illness. She went through an incredibly traumatic event in the loss of her son and husband. At the time that the accident happened, Maddie was seriously ill. In Maddie’s mother’s mind, it made sense that Maddie had SCID and she lived that belief for so long that it became the truth. So while I do believe that Maddie’s emotions were justified, I do also believe that Maddie should have handled her mother’s case with more understanding and compassion. While Maddie was in Hawaii, all she wanted was her mother. She felt bad for the way she had treated her and understood what she was trying to do for her. She also understood that her mother was acting from a place of love. All of that understanding is gone when it is revealed that Maddie isn’t actually sick. Now, I also believe that Maddie is rude to Olly when she gets back from Hawaii. (I am not a really big fan of after Hawaii Maddie in general). Maybe that just transferred to her mom once she decided to go after Olly.
The problem with Maddie’s mother’s mental illness ties into my problem with the end of the book. Compared to the rest of the novel, the ending felt rushed and underdeveloped. The mother daughter relationship that was strong at the beginning of the novel was destroyed or left hanging by the end. The implications of both Maddie’s disease and her mother’s mental illness were underdeveloped. Yoon tried to return to the light hearted contemporary tone that Everything, Everything had at the beginning of the novel and it didn’t feel appropriate in the least. I also wanted to point out (on a slightly unrelated note) that when Olly’s dad moves away, Maddie hugs him goodbye. I was incredibly put off by this, even though it was a tiny moment. There is noway that after falling in love with Olly, and understanding how much his dad hurt him, that Maddie would hug Olly’s father goodbye. I feel like this specific line is a good way of pointing out how off the tone is at the end of the book and how the ending seems to disregard the gravity of the events leading up to the conclusion of the novel.
Overall:
Somehow, despite the problems that I had with Everything, Everything, I still enjoyed a lot of it. I do believe that it deserves a 3 ½-4 stars (85% out of 100%) on my rating scale. However, I have a feeling that I am going to continue to feel conflicted on it, so my rating may change. I hope that you all had a successful day one/two and that your week of reading continues to go well! I was actually social today, so I didn’t get much reading done. It also took me a lot longer to write this review than I thought it would. Additionally, I went to the library and picked up some of the books that I put on hold. The good news is that means that I now have the second Lumberjanes graphic novel! Hopefully I will be able to finish Lumberjanes Vol 2 tonight so that I can make some progress towards completing the challenges.
See you all tomorrow.
-Jaime