Every Day

David Levithan

'A' (our protagonist) is a teenager who wakes up in a different body each day. He "borrows" that body, pushing the host consciousness aside while he is there, able to access memories as needed to interact as the host would. He only needs to know enough to survive, and not screw up the host life, until midnight, when he jumps to a new body. He has never known anything different, and has resigned himself to be as unobtrusive as possible in each host. Until he meets the girl. And falls in love. And then what? This is the ultimate in forbidden love stories. I enjoyed Levithan's initial exploration of identity with 'A', making me think about how you know who you are (see Middlesex). But it was left short, and I was largely unfulfilled in being led down this path of identity exploration. As readers we were not pushed into depth or provided a compass for inquiry. I am tempted to say you can only do so much with the YA genre, but that is a cop out. Some of the best social commentary/criticism in the past decade has come out of YA for those willing to listen (see Divergent and Unwind series). The only alternative is to say this is highly creative, yet ultimately mediocre as an instigator of thought.

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