David Levithan’s Every Day is not the kind of love story that offers easy resolutions or happy endings. Instead, it delivers a tale that is both gut-wrenching and thought-provoking, forcing readers to question the nature of love, identity, and destiny.
The story follows a character named A who wakes up every morning in a different body, inhabiting a new life each day. Despite this extraordinary condition, A falls deeply in love with Rhiannon, a girl who sees beyond the shifting physical forms to the essence of who he is.
From the outset, the story makes clear that the relationship is fraught with impossibility. Yet Levithan writes it in such a way that readers, like A, continue to hope that somehow love will prevail.
Throughout the book, Levithan evokes an emotional push and pull that keeps the reader invested. Each new chapter brings the possibility of a breakthrough. Each encounter with Rhiannon suggests that maybe, this time, things will work out differently.
The narrative toys with hope, offering moments where A almost convinces himself – and the reader – that love will conquer the odds. But as the story unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that no matter how fiercely A fights, the love he longs for cannot last.
The strength of the novel lies in how Levithan crafts A’s character. Despite the ethical complications of inhabiting and temporarily erasing the lives of others, A is written with such depth and humanity that readers cannot help but root for him.
Even when he lies, manipulates circumstances, or risks the lives he borrows just to spend fleeting hours with Rhiannon, his longing is so raw that readers forgive him. In fact, Levithan succeeds in making readers wish, almost desperately, that A could remain in a single body forever, if only to secure the love he desires.
This tension between desire and impossibility creates a reading experience that is compelling and painful. One chapter in particular, where A earnestly believes that his relationship with Rhiannon could somehow endure, is simultaneously touching and delusional.
It highlights the fragility of hope when confronted with unyielding circumstances. Levithan captures this delusion with humour and heartbreak, leaving the reader torn between admiration and despair.
Beyond its central romance, Every Day raises profound questions about the nature of identity, love, and human connection. The idea of A never being able to remain himself, of always being forced to wear someone else’s face, mirrors the broader human struggle of longing for permanence in an impermanent world.
It also forces reflection on what love really means: is it tied to the body, or to something deeper?
Readers may also find themselves connecting the narrative to larger philosophical or even spiritual ideas. For some, A’s condition resembles the biblical figure Paul, who is often interpreted as someone destined for a life without romantic companionship despite longing for connection. In this way, the novel taps into universal anxieties about loneliness, desire, and the painful realisation that some loves are not meant to be fulfilled.
Levithan’s prose is accessible yet layered, balancing moments of humour with passages of heartbreaking sincerity. The pacing is tight, with each chapter offering new surprises and emotional turns. The book is easy to read but difficult to put down, precisely because it keeps dangling the possibility of an impossible happy ending.
In the end, Every Day delivers an emotional punch that lingers long after the final page. The goodbye scene between A and Rhiannon is not just the end of a romance but a devastating recognition of reality. Love, the book suggests, does not always conquer all. Sometimes it simply cannot. And yet, the beauty lies in the fact that the love existed at all, however fleetingly.
For its emotional intensity, originality, and thought-provoking themes, Every Day stands out as one of Levithan’s most powerful works. It leaves readers questioning the nature of love and identity while also offering a story that feels painfully human, despite its fantastical premise.
It is a book that demands to be re-read, both for the pleasure of Levithan’s storytelling and for the raw emotion it evokes.
Rating: 9/10 – heartbreaking, unforgettable, and worth revisiting.
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