Real rating: 3.5/5

I graduated with my B.A. in English Literature in 2015. I felt as though I'd overloaded on books, but I also really hadn't read anything that was strictly 'for me' in almost four years, not since I was in high school. After graduation, I realized that my tastes had matured and varied greatly from what I enjoyed before I entered college, and it would take a lot of trial-and-error to discover what sort of books I enjoyed post-grad. Since then, I've been reading a lot of Y.A. because it's typically easy for me to read and doesn't take a lot of critical thought (though critical thought can absolutely--should absolutely--be applied).

All this to say, it has been a long, long time since I've been able to sit down and read a book in largely one sitting. I have long work hours, I'm tired a lot, and I have other hobbies, like writing, that occupy a majority of my time. 'Every Day' was the first book in two years that I was unable to put down. If you're looking for a light, digestable page-turner, David Levithan has crafted one here. I read the entire book in almost one sitting, give or take maybe 15 pages during my lunch break the day before. It was a fun journey and incredibly enjoyable. I loved the gender and sexuality dynamics Levithan wanted to explore--would a person who switched bodies every day identify as one gender or the other, or on the nonbinary spectrum; would they have gendered sexual preferences; how would they define consent since the body they occupied isn't really theirs? These questions are all addressed within the novel, and I found them compelling ideas to explore.

I will say, I'm not sure I actually liked A, the protagonist. There is a lot of problematic behavior that I'm not sure was intentional, and I'm equally unsure whether I enjoyed that aspect of the novel. I suppose I was willing to overlook it to see where the story went, but I'm a little concerned about how Levithan handled some things. Notably, there was an entire chapter that centered around fatphobia. There were several characters depicted as just nasty, bitchy, and given no dimension, and they were all female. Levithan even fell into the 'this girl wears too much make-up and that's fake' trap. I didn't feel that Levithan was particularly kind to the female bodies A inhabited/the minds they accessed, and I was very disappointed in that regard.

I also feel that A's relationship with the love interest, Rhiannon, is more than a little toxic. If I was reading a typical book in the oversaturated Y.A. romance market and A was a cisgendered male pursuing a girl in the way they pursue Rhiannon in this book, I would honestly have put the book down immediately. It's creepy, and no amount of 'I feel like this is predestined' would have made it okay to me. Run, Rhiannon, run.

Even with those criticisms, I'm going to give the book a 3.5 on the star scale, represented on Goodreads as 4 stars because I feel 3 is too unkind. I enjoyed this book even with the problematic elements I mentioned above, and I think it's worth reading before the movie comes out in the next few months.