Every Day by David Levithan

Each morning he wakes up in a different body. There’s never any warning about who it will be but he is used to that. Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

That’s fine until he wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which he has been living no longer apply because finally he has found someone he wants to be with – every day.

The premise of this book is interesting. The protagonist who ages as the same rate as any human spends individual days in a different host body all within the same geographical area.

The main theme of this book is young love and I thought the author did a splendid job of portraying two young people who could not be together. Whilst this is not exactly Romeo and Juliet, the author has taken a similar theme and portrayed it in a way that is accessible and engaging for young people.

What was interesting is that we, through A's eyes, get a glimpse of the lives of many different ethnic groups and  sexuality types. Whilst this was a little predictable because at times it felt as though the author was working his way through a list of different types of people, it was also interesting to see how all these people coped with their lives through A’s eyes.

I was a little disappointed in this book as I hoped that we would find out why A seems destined to spend his life jumping from one body to the next, as indeed, A himself is constantly wondering. However, I think this is probably the point of the book because the whole novel is written from A’s point of view and he is constantly pondering the same question. I also think that this book ended on an open note to make way for a possible sequel.

I thought this was a good book but not a great one. However, this is intended for a younger audience than me and I think I would have loved this had I read it a few decades ago.

ISBN: 978 1405264426

Publisher:  Electric Monkey

Price: (for the paperback on Amazon.co.uk):  £3.99

About the Author:  

David Leviathan won the Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel Boy Meets Boy but is probably best known for his collaborations with John Green and Rachel Cohn.

As well as being a New York Times best-selling author, David is also a highly respected children’s book editor.

He lives and works in New York.