Reviews with content warning for Addiction - Every Day

Reviews tagging 'Addiction'

Every Day by David Levithan

23 reviews

k8lynn's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

i flew through this one! this book had its up and downs for me. david levithan's writing is excellent,

however i'm not a fan of how quickly things start with rhiannon & how things escalate between them rather quickly. why does he love her after like three days? & it felt VERY redundant how on a consistent basis every chapter started with "i'm X miles/minutes/towns away from Rhiannon." creepy stalker much?

i'm also really disappointed in the fatphobic chapter and the chapter with the suicidal ideations; the way these were handled were very abrupt and insensitive. i understand why some people really hated this book (due to the chapter where A is like 300lbs & a trigger warning on the addict and suicidal people would have been nice!). his descrptions of life in a 2X body are quite offensive and i don't even relate to that.

those parts made me very uncomfortable. the second to last chapter made me cry & i was very enamored with all the different people we had the opportunity to meet whilst reading this. very clever concept, but i would have handled certain ideas better and paced things a lot differently if i wrote this. finally, the ending is very sad and in some ways feels empty. & some topics/ideas/feelings A feels passionate about throughout the novel fall short at the end which bothered me a bit. an altogether great read, but i had a lot of qualms that skewed my overall judgment.

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thedubstepdoge's review

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Wow…….. this book is just….. phenomenal. I’ve never read anything like this before. This is just so unique and such an interesting premise and it’s so well written. I had had this on my to-read list for a bit because it seemed interesting and i happened to find it at a thrift store yesterday and got instantly hooked, i swear i could not put it down. A is such an interesting and cool character, it’s really interesting seeing the perspective of a different person each day and how people are alike in so many different ways but also different in ways we never really think of.

As i said before, the writing is excellent and A has such a unique and interesting view of the world since they view it through a different lenses every single day. Here’s some quotes I liked a lot from the book:

“School is school—she wants it to be over, but she’s afraid of it being over, because then she’ll have to figure out what comes next.” (12)
“Kindness connects to who you are, while niceness connects to how you want to be seen.” (56)
“There are many things that can keep you in a relationship, Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that’s okay, because you don’t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there’s the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won’t change.” (71)
“I have been to many religious services over the years. Each one I go to only reinforces my general impression that religions have much, much more in common than they like to admit. The beliefs are almost always the same; it's just that the histories are different. Everybody wants to believe in a higher power. Everybody wants to belong to something bigger than themselves, and everybody wants company in doing that. They want there to be a force of good on earth, and they want an incentive to be a part of that force. They want to be able to prove their belief and their belonging, through rituals and devotion. They want to touch the enormity. / It's only in the finer points that it gets complicated and contentious, the inability to realize that no matter what our religion or gender or race or geographic background, we all have about 98 percent in common with each other. Yes, the differences between male and female are biological, but if you look at the biology as a matter of percentage, there aren't a whole lot of things that are different. Race is different purely as a social construction, not as an inherent difference. And religion—whether you believe in God or Yahweh or Allah or something else, odds are that at heart you want the same things. For whatever reason, we like to focus on the 2 percent that's different, and most of the conflict in the world comes from that.” (77)
“This is the trap of having something to live for: Everything else seems lifeless” (116)
“Some people think mental illness is a matter of mood, a matter of personality. They think depression is simply a form of being sad, that OCD is a form of being uptight. They think the soul is sick, not the body. It is, they believe, something that you have some choice over. / I know how wrong this is. / When I was a child, I didn't understand. I would wake up in a new body and wouldn't comprehend why things felt muted, dimmer. Or the opposite—I'd be supercharged, unfocused, like a radio at top volume flipping quickly from station to station. Since I didn't have access to the body's emotions, I assumed the ones I was feeling were my own. Eventually, though, I realized these inclinations, these compulsions, were as much a part of the body as its eye color or its voice. Yes, the feelings themselves were intangible, amorphous, but the cause of the feelings was a matter of chemistry, biology. / It is a hard cycle to conquer. The body is working against you. And because of this, you feel even more despair. Which only amplifies the imbalance. It takes uncommon strength to live with these things. But I have seen that strength over and over again. When I fall into the life of someone grappling, I have to mirror their strength, and sometimes surpass it, because I am less prepared.” (119-120)
“We come to a corner where there are a few people protesting the [pride parade] festivities. I don't understand this at all. It's like protesting the fact that some people are red-haired. / In my experience, desire is desire, love is love. I have never fallen in love with a gender. I have fallen for individuals. I know this is hard for people to do, but I don't understand wh it's so hard, when it's so obvious.” (142)
“It's like Cinderella in reverse. I've danced with the prince, and now I'm back home, cleaning the toilets. That is my punishment—every toilet, every tub, every garbage pail. This would be bad enough, but every few minutes, George's mother stops in to give me a lecture about "the sins of the flesh." I hope that George doesn't internalize her scare tactics. I want to argue with her, tell her that "sins of the flesh" is just a control mechanism—if you demonize a person's pleasure, then you can control his or her life. I can't say how many times this tool has been wielded against me, in a variety of forms. But I see no sin in a kiss. I only see sin in the condemnation.” (223)
“On the drive, I access pieces of Vic's history. There are few things harder than being born into the wrong body. I had to deal with it a lot when I was growing up, but only for a day. Before i became so adaptable—so acquiescent to the way my life worked—I would resist some of the transitions. I loved having long hair, and would resent it when I woke up to find my long hair was gone. There were days I felt like a girl and days I felt like a boy, and those days wouldn't always correspond with the body I was in. I still believed everyone when they said I had to be one or the other. Nobody was telling me a different story, and I was too young to think for myself. I had yet to learn that when it came to gender, I was both and neither. / It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win… and yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.” (254)

Anyways yeah this was an excellent book and I enjoyed reading it very much. I just ordered the second and third books and am really curious to where the story will go from here, no spoilers but the ending was pretty crazy and surprising and this book overall is super good.

Content Warnings

maya_b's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.5

Die Idee dieses Buches gefällt mir wirklich unglaublich gut, und immer wieder gibt es Momente, die ich einfach fantastisch geschrieben fand. Die Diversität der Figuren, die mal ganz beiläufig, mal größer in die Geschichte eingebaut ist, hat mir wirklich gut gefallen, und A dabei zuzusehen, wie er immer wieder die Leben wechselt und in neuen Situationen ist, die er irgendwie meistern muss, fand ich wirklich spannend.
Auch hat mir das Konzept gefallen, dass es für A nicht wirklich Geschlechter gibt und es kaum einen Unterschied macht, und er sich weder männlich noch weiblich und gleichzeitig aber irgendwie beides fühlt. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass das Buch (und besonders das Hörbuch) das nicht vollkommen wiedergibt, da der Sprecher Männlich war und der Klappentext außerdem von "ihm" spricht, entsprechend wirkt es beim Lesen/Hören schon so, als wäre A männlich, aber ich hatte auch das Gefühl dass es ihn nicht stört, wenn man ihn anders wahrnimmt, und die Art, wie er einfach mit dem lebt, was ihn jeden Tag aufs neue erwartet, fand ich wirklich schön gemacht.
Was auch der Grund ist, aus dem ich wirklich gerne nur das gehabt hätte. Denn diesen Teil der Geschichte fand ich wirklich toll, und auch der Plot mit Nathan war wirklich interessant, aber leider hat die Liebesgeschichte mir überhaupt nicht gefallen.

Die Tatsache, dass es Liebe auf den ersten Blick ist, und er dann wirklich immer und immer wieder darauf besteht, dass er sie liebt, und er bei ihr sein muss, und dass er ohne sie nicht leben kann, war einfach zu viel für meinen Geschmack. Dass er sie ein paar Stunden kennt und lässt seine Liebe sofort an Besessenheit grenzen, wenn man mich fragt, und dass er daraufhin immer wieder alle Grenzen überschreitet, die es gibt, nur um diese Liebe tatsächlich zu bekommen hat mir einfach nicht gefallen. Und zwar nicht nur ihre Grenzen, sondern auch die so ziemlich aller Personen, in deren Körper er steckt. Oft fand ich ihn sympathisch, in vielen kleinen Momenten mochte ich die Art, wie er denkt, aber dann gab es Momente, wie den, in dem er bereit gewesen wäre, ein Date zu versetzen, an dem ihm etwas lag, oder als er den Familienurlaub nicht mit angetreten hat und der Körper darum vermutlich die schlimmsten Probleme jemals bekommen hat/wird, und ... ich hatte einfach so oft das Gefühl, dass er Leben zerstört, und dass er das Gefühl hat, dass ein paar Stunden mit irgendeinem Mädchen (sie ist nett, ja, und ich mag sie, aber sie ist trotzdem nur irgendein Mädchen) das rechtfertigen und okay machen, ging einfach gar nicht.

Leider hat mir an der Stelle auch das Ende wirklich nicht gefallen, auch wenn ich verstehe, was das Ziel war.

Also dass er sie hat gehen lassen ist toll, aber nachdem sie ihm gesagt hat, sie braucht nach der Trennung mehr Zeit und alles ist schwer ist sein nächster Anlauf, ihr einfach jemand anderen als sich selbst zu besorgen? Was? Was genau hat er denn nicht verstanden, als sie meinte, sie muss erst mal über Justin hinweg kommen?!

Also eine wirklich tolle Grundidee, und alles um den Hauptplot drumherum mochte ich sehr gerne, aber der hat leider sehr zu wünschen übrig gelassen, da ich immer wieder an As Intentionen zweifeln musste, und ob er wirklich so gut ist, und ich hätte es einfach wesentlich cooler gefunden, wenn er sich unabhängig von der Liebesgeschichte etwas weiterentwickelt hätte, und nicht Rhiannon für alles der Auslöser gewesen wäre. (Und so sehr sie es verdient hat, glücklich zu sein, fühlte sich As Wunsch danach, sie glücklich zu machen und an ihrer Seite zu sein, doch sehr gezwungen in meinen Augen an. Wirklich jedes andere Paar in dem Buch (außer Justin und Rhiannon vielleicht) hatte mehr Chemie als die beiden, in meinen Augen, und ich fand es wirklich schade, so viel Zeit "verschwenden" zu müssen, um über die zu lesen, wenn A sich in der Zeit genauso gut auf andere Leben hätte einlassen können ...)
Insgesamt trotzdem weder richtig schlecht noch richtig gut. Die Romanze hat als schwächster Part leider überwogen, aber der Rest hat mir so gut gefallen, dass es für mich trotzdem eher ein Mittel-Ding ist. Es hätte allerdings wesentlich besser sein können, und ich hätte es mir auch gewünscht.

Content Warnings

rafacolog's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

pelledorso's review against another edition

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emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

hannah_27_'s review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.75

Content Warnings

paperquilt's review

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fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Content Warnings

lydiasbooknook's review

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

I appreciate a book that focuses in one main concept and explores it in many different ways; what would waking up as a new person every day really mean? I feel like it could have gone even more in depth but I feel like the author struck a balance and didnt overstay their welcome. The concept as it was presented left me with more questions I could happily explore on my own. The love story and central plot felt secondary to my own enjoyment of it, but others might get more out if that aspect too. A book I could recommend most casual readers.

Content Warnings

bittersorbitol's review

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adventurous emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Wasn't a huge fan of Rhiannon, so it made me really frustrated when

A kept wrecking people's lives/relationships for her.

Overall though, I loved the concept of the body switching and wish it would be explored further!

Content Warnings

ginbat's review

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reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Not all books need to have a thick plot, but to say this book has none would be an understatement. Unlikeable characters can be a good thing, but I just couldn't really find much that I liked about this book. It could be worse I guess? Just wasn't for me.

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