Audiobook Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Title: Every Day
Author: David Levithan (web | twitter)
Narrator: Alex McKenna
Genre: Contemporary YA, Paranormal YA
Amazon | Goodreads | Audible
Publisher: Knopf BFYR, Listening Library
Release date: August 28, 2012
Source: Library
Challenge: YA Audiobook Challenge
Summary: Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

I feel like I’ve been on a kick lately of reviewing books that other people really enjoyed but left me a little disappointed. EVERY DAY by David Levithan falls into this category a little bit. The story of a…well, A isn’t a person so much as he/she is a spirit or a soul or…something, EVERY DAY is less a book about the characters than it is about love and people and relationships. All of that, the themes, is AWESOME, and I appreciated it and enjoyed it and the way it made me think. However, there’s still those characters floating around, and those I had some issues with. I ended up being torn about this one, although I did like the audio-ness of it very much.

So, the main storyline of EVERY DAY revolves around A, the aforementioned person-without-a-body who wakes up every single day in a new birthday suit. Sometimes A is a girl, sometimes A is a boy. A is genderless. One day, he wakes up in this kid Justin’s body and develops an instant and major crush on Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon, and spends the rest of the book dealing with the new feelings of attachment and love, as well as the inherent issues that come with waking up in different bodies every day. There’s some drama that develops as the book goes on that has to do with some people finding out about what A can do as well that I liked LOTS.

I haven’t read any books by David Levithan before this one (I KNOW), but I’ve always understood his books to have these really awesome themes about love and acceptance and growing up, and EVERY DAY has those things. Because A has been both boys and girls, being weirded out by being in a girl’s body and having feelings for another girl doesn’t matter to him/her. Bodies are just sleeves. There are great interactions in this book about this issue and others, and I’m glad for them. They’re important concepts to get into people’s heads: that, truly, what is inside is what matters the most.

However, A’s attitude towards the bodies he/she inhabits each day grated on me a little at first, but then became full-blown dislike, and as EVERY DAY wound to its conclusion I found myself calling A names and yelling out loud while listening to the book in my car. It was a grade-A fist-shaker, friends. GRADE. A.

I had a pretty big problem with the way A took advantage of the bodies he/she inhabited just so that he could essentially stalk Rhiannon. He stole cars, made people miss family events, took COMPLETE, horrible advantage of pretty girl’s bodies to try and lure Rhiannon’s admittedly horrid boyfriend, Justin, into CHEATING on Rhiannon so that they would break up. HELL TO THE NO. But the worst was when–GOD FORBID–A wound up in the body of an overweight boy. GUYS. I’m feeling the indignation RIGHT THIS SECOND and I finished reading this book over a month ago. Apparently, being overweight is the result of someone being lazy, and A is so grossed out by being fat that “he” APOLOGIZES to Rhiannon for being so physically unappealing. That would have been enough to put me over the edge if A’s being overweight and being too fat for Rhiannon didn’t also serve as a pretty legit turning point in the WRONG direction for whatever their relationship was. It was an actual block for them. Hands down, WORST.

As EVERY DAY went on, A would say with increasing frequency something along the lines of, “I know I shouldn’t be doing this to [insert name of person A was inhabiting], but I’m only 2 hours away from Rhiannon, so I do it anyway.” This usually involved making off with some poor kid’s car and driving to Rhiannon’s school and just WALKING IN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY. The way A manipulated the bodies he was in got old. Eep!!

Speaking of Rhiannon, I kind of felt a little ambivalent about her, except for the times when her shallowness made her a little off-putting and I felt outright negative. That being said, I can’t say that she didn’t handle some CRAY BIZ relatively well, all things considered. Still, she only ever seemed really attracted to A when he was a good-looking boy. She was missing the point of EVERY DAY entirely, at least as I saw it, which is a shame, because I thought the point was pretty great.

The audio of EVERY DAY was also really good. I liked Alex McKenna as a narrator. She had a gravelly voice that I liked listening to–totally more like a real person’s voice than the super-smooth, clear voices you hear on lots of audiobooks. I’ll listen to more of her narration any time.

Overall, friends, I would have to say that EVERY DAY by David Levithan is a book that has themes and morals that I can TOTALLY get behind, but the characters themselves really rubbed me the wrong way. Like I said earlier: I’m torn, guys. I know that lots of people enjoyed this book, and I can see why they did. For me, I had a hard time getting over my issues with A. ALAS. If you haven’t read it yet, though, I hope you give it a go and enjoy it. The audio is a great way to go, too.

Check out some other reviews of Every Day by David Levithan!

Magan @ Rather Be Reading: “Levithan left no stone unturned in exploring A’s life and circumstances.”

Angel @ Mermaid Visions: “Where the story failed to hook me was the romance between A & Rhiannon, which was really the only thing that ever motivated A during the entire novel.”

Jamie @ The Perpetual Page Turner: “This book is imaginative, will dazzle you with its beauty, make you fall in love with A and make you just want to promptly start it all over again.”