A review by testpattern
Every Day, by David Levithan

adventurous dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is a breezy, kind of light read with some hard bummer moments. The main character is an entity that hops bodies every day, taking over another person's life for 24 hours. The novel does a good job of considering how the biological factors that affect our minds would impinge upon a consciousness that was just visiting, as it were. Things like depression, addiction, and even habitual personality traits tend to seep into the narrator's mind. They (the narrator has no gender, having been born into this mode of existing) have gone through their whole transitory life trying to simply leave no trace, just fit in. But then they meet someone that they fall for, and they start to push against the lives of the bodies they inhabit, attempting for once to carve out a life of their own. 

This is essentially a big What If? SF novel, where the whole of the action is about exploring the ramifications of the central conceit. It's pretty okay. I cared about the characters, and I felt that the emotional heft was truthful and well-earned. The style was fairly flat. Nothing wrong with it, but not deathless prose for the ages. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings