Evening Reads | Everyday by David Levithan (Spoiler alert!)

This isn't exactly an evening read because I finished this book in a day. I was quite disappointed because I felt that the story had so much potential, but it was completely ruined by the protagonist's love obsession and selfishness. This is written in first-person narrative so I found it so hard to relate to him or be even remotely interested in his thoughts and feelings.

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally A has found someone he wants to be with—day in, day out, day after day.

I find the concept of being in a different body everyday intriguing and I love how each chapter addresses a different life. It's kind of like reading a short story in each chapter, except that these stories interlink to form the bigger picture. He enters the bodies of people of different gender, race, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and even people who are suicidal. Doesn't this book sound so interesting?

Here's where the problem comes in: the protagonist ruins most of these potentially amazing stories with his obsessive thoughts over a girl he met in one of the earlier bodies and immediately fell in love with. He adopts this stalker-like behaviour, leaving behind the life of the person he's in to find that girl again and again, even though the person he's in seems to have an engaging back-story.

I better stop here because I already gave so much away, but I wouldn't recommend this book anyway. To end this post on a lighter note, here's a (redeeming) quote in the book that I really like.