When gems are outed and movies are made

The premise:

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.

My thoughts:

I read this about 4 years ago but just did not write about it because it was such an original, creative premise, I did not want my insignificant voice to jinx it. I don't have the influence of someone like Anthony Bordain, but for him, sometimes when a restaurant is so unique and part of the charm is that it is a personal connection, then he does not say the name of the restaurant. It was like that for this book. Even if it was a NY Times best seller, I wanted to keep it small. A hidden gem that I did not pass on so that others would have that same personal satisfaction of finding something for no other reason than because they were meant to find it.

The writing is not perfect. Levithan's own voice sometimes seems to intrude. However, the concept outweighs everything else. It is like the correspondence of Griffin and Sabine and opening up those artistic envelopes like a YA version of The Jolly Postman.

But  YA books to movies are so inevitable that this is in the theaters, which brings people to the movie that did not find their way to the book. Sigh.

I must also confess that I did not seek out and read the follow up to Every Day because I just felt like that niggling irritation with Levithan's own voice intruding would actually become a raging storm if I tried to read more. I think sometimes one and done is good. I am sure that it is hard to do as a writer who is invested in the character and world they create. However, I learned the hard way from reading Pullman's The Golden Compass that if there is a hint of heavy handed agenda in the first book, there will be more in the next books and it will get distracting and hard to ignore. Fantasy is a nice vehicle to share ideas about morality, religion, and other philosophical stances, but as readers, we have the power to walk away too when the desire to be aesthetically transported is disturbed by preachiness.