A YEAR OF READING WOMEN CHALLENGE
April - works by women of colour.

For the most part, this felt like a refreshing young adult romance. The Afro-Asian American protagonist, Madeleine, is a rarity, both due to her ethnicity (because how many of the highly buzzed YA phenomenons are led by women of colour?) and because of her illness, which provides the central focus of the narrative. Madeleine has SKID, a rare condition that leaves her allergic to the world, trapped in her house for seventeen years, home schooled, with no social interaction aside from her doctor mother and her nurse, and her only friends are her books.

Things change when she meets her new neighbour, Ollie. Through window mimes and instant messenger, the two fall in love. It's a doomed romance much in the vein of The Fault in Our Stars (complete with magical holiday) and other works, but it is a curious and refreshing take as, rather than being in love and facing death, Madeleine is very much alive, but under the constant shadow of death. Despite this intriguing premise, the novel itself is quite cheesy, but always kept enjoyable and engaging through the unconventional narrative techniques of emails, doodles, IMs, limericks, and Madeleine and Ollie's other varied communications.

All of this is undone by the novel's final twist. I will not reveal what that twist is, but it cheapens the narrative. Rather than commit to a unique slant on star-crossed lovers, this ending appears to be tacked on as a ray of hope. However, it should really be treated as horror. The truth of Madeleine's situation is not treated with the life-shattering destruction of trust that it deserves. Madeleine is not given the space to fully reflect on what has been robbed of her, and ultimately, it results in lazy, unsatisfying storytelling. Without this ending, Everything Everything could have been one of the most exciting YA romances of recent times.