“Everyday” by David Levithan is a young adult fictional novel published August 28th, 2012. This book revolves around our main character “A” who hasn't yet discovered who he truly is, because he is a different person everyday. Everyday covers the major theme of acceptance as the main character has accepted that they will never have their own life, their own birthday, or their own family. A inhabits the body of a new person each day beginning at midnight with no idea who they will be next. What he does know is that everyday, he is head over heels with the same girl. A desperately clings onto her love as he changes bodies everyday and has to learn to accept that she can never truly be in love with them, because they don’t know who they’re supposed to be yet. This book addresses the sensation that is everybody being their own person and having their own life with different experiences. A doesn’t have any original experiences as one day he wakes up as a mean cheerleader and the next day as a handsome football player. Our individual traits and relationships are what we identify ourselves as. Looking at this main character is designed to get the reader to start thinking about what it would be like to be in another person's shoes. But it also dives deeper and looks beyond physical appearance and personality. Kirkus reviews describes this book as, “An awe-inspiring, thought provoking reminder that love reaches beyond physical appearances and gender.” (Virginia,K 2012 Every Day- Reviews. Kirkus Reviews.1.323). A’s love interest has to learn to accept or deny the fact that the person in love with her is never one person and has to try and look past A’s gender for the day or physical appearance and look for him deep inside through his words. This book contains multiple depictions of the lgbtqia+ community as the people A inhabit are members of that community and A must learn what loving the same gender is like. In the end gender isn't what is important, it's who the person is
inside. Even when A is a girl, they dont stop liking their love interest. Many of David Levithan’s past writings center around this community such as, “Boy Meets Boy” and “Two Boys Kissing”. In summary, I rated this book 5 stars because I’ve never seen any other book like it. It is a book I will remember and think about while reading any other book because of the various ideas portrayed in it from multiple different perspectives. I agree with the idea that love does not have to be 100% based on physical appearance and gender. If you truly love somebody, you should be able to love them no matter who or what they are. The main character doesn’t judge any of the bodies they’re in, they just experience what it's like to live like that person and gain those experiences. This book suggests the idea that love is possible with all genders, various distances, various sizes, and personal struggles. The only topic I've seen covered in other books relating to the lgbtqia community that wasn’t covered in this book is the idea of gender fluidity. Gender fluidity is the idea that you wake up identifying as whatever gender you feel you are. Considering the situation that the main character is in, I was surprised there wasn’t any correlation to this identification. I can relate to a specific character in this story Holly who is in a long distance relationship with her girlfriend in Paris. I had a long distance girlfriend in Kansas and felt that I loved her, but the distance was hard. This book really puts into perspective what love feels like from others in long distance relationships or close distance relationships. In the end, “Everyday” by David Levithan is an amazing book that covers a wide range of topics revolving around the theme of acceptance. Accepting your type of love and who you are is important knowing that one day you could wake up as a different person and lose everything you know. Making the best of your situation can allow you to continue with your life and connect with others around you. For potential readers, this book does contain some mature content and some of the characters in this story are not in the best situations in order to educate the reader. If you are to read this in the future, google some potential trigger warnings first. Besides this, I would 100% recommend this book to anybody who is interested in romance of any kind.