After a bit of deliberation I decided to demote Every Day from a 4-star book to a 3-star book. There was something nagging me, pulling at my heart - but it's so hard to go against the flow of LOVE for this book, and for David Levithan (and rightly so).

His protagonist, A, wakes up every day in a different body. Each chapter starts with a new morning in a new body and a new experience for A. Here Levithan has crafted a person (a person-less person, even) with such empathy, humor and compassion for the rest of us bumbling humans. It's hard not to love this book.

Until.

Well, until one chapter in particular. One morning "A" wakes up and finds him/herself in the body of an fat male teenager. I was really blindstruck by how little compassion A has for this particular person he's experiencing. He describes him as being lazy and apathetic, and you know what, maybe he is. It's completely possible. But that's also the go-to stereotype for every fat kid in high school. "A" has a certain amount of access to the person's emotions/memories, so there was a chance for him to give this kid some backstory. There is always a reason that people overeat, and it's usually pain avoidance like any other addiction. It didn't have to be a Fat Kid's Manifesto but honestly, a couple of lines thrown in to humanize this boy would have made all the difference.

From David Levithan I expected a lot more. I feel that he missed a great opportunity to humanize a group of people that remain one of the last cross-sections of humanity that we deem ok to belittle, stereotype and pass serious judgment upon. It made me quite sad.