Review- Every You, Every Me by David Levithan

Every You, Every Me on Goodreads

 BOOK SUMMARY:

In this high school-set psychological tale, a tormented teen named Evan starts to discover a series of unnerving photographs—some of which feature him. Someone is stalking him . . . messing with him . . . threatening him. Worse, ever since his best friend Ariel has been gone, he's been unable to sleep, spending night after night torturing himself for his role in her absence. And as crazy as it sounds, Evan's starting to believe it's Ariel that's behind all of this, punishing him. But the more Evan starts to unravel the mystery, the more his paranoia and insomnia amplify, and the more he starts to unravel himself. Creatively told with black-and-white photos interspersed between the text so the reader can see the photos that are so unnerving to Evan, Every You, Every Me is a one-of-a-kind departure from a one-of-a-kind author.

Release date: September 11th 2012

Published by: Ember

Page numbers: 243

REVIEW: 

Being a huge, huge, HUGE David Levithan fan, I was really looking forward to reading Every You, Every Me. But just the fact that this is a David Levithan book didn't excite me as much as the fact that this is a photographic novel. Now I have read books with photos, but a photographic novel was a new concept, and I was quite excited to see how it would turn out. I normally don't care much for pictures in books, because it's the words that matter to me, but I thought that with Every You, Every Me, my mind would be changed for the better. 

Now while I did like the idea of Every You, Every Me, for a David Levithan book- and I hate saying this with all my heart- it was rather mediocre and lacklustre. The writing and narrative were brilliant, as always because when David Levithan sits to write, I imagine the words just flow from his head and heart. So the writing was undoubtedly perfect, although the strikethroughs were very close to getting on my nerves, but I could easily oversee that. As expected, the writing was flawless and faultless. 

What really annoyed me this time with Every You, Every Me was the characters who were very typical David Levithan in their quaint and unique way, but they irritated me because no one was clear about what was going on, what they wanted, and what they were willing to do about it. So while we have the mysteriously disappeared Ariel whose presence wasn't felt in her absence, we have her friend and our main voice Evan, who was just confused. The only character who seemed likeable and at times practical to me was Jack, Ariel's ex-boyfriend because at least he seemed sure of what he didn't want. 

Overall, I was disappointed with Every You, Every Me. If you take a look at my copy of the book, which is practically covered in sticky notes, you might question my disappointment. But you have to understand, I fell in love with the words, not so much with the story. So for the pleasure of words, sentences, lines and reading just to feel the power and glory of words, I would recommend this book without the blink of an eye, but here's a warning: don't expect a moving David Levithan story.  

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