Every You, Every Me by David Levithan

Every You, Every Me by David Levithan

Release Date: September 13th 2011
Pages: 245
Format: Hardcover
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Random House Canada
Buy It: Book Depository

Evan starts to discover a series of unnerving photographs—some of which feature 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.

I absolutely adored the last two books I read by David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary and Will Grayson, Will Grayson), so I was pretty excited to pick up his latest– a novel inspired by a set of haunting photographs taken my Jonathan Farmer and e-mailed to him one at a time as he wrote the book. The premise was also intriguing, but although I didn't dislike Every You, Every Me, I was disappointed I couldn't fall in love with it either.

The use of strike out when writing is sometimes effective, I appreciated it in Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson for example, but I found it mostly distracting here. The writing is sparse but has an impact, and the book is a lot darker than anything I've read by Levithan before (for example, Boy Meets Boy) but feels genuine. Every You, Every Me takes on some important issues, though I won't be more specific to avoid spoiling it, and it does so with eloquence and authenticity. The novel itself is just as eerie as the cover would indicate.

Every You, Every Me is filled with the kind of angst and emotional struggle I probably would have had more appreciation for if I'd been reading the book as a teen, instead of in my early twenties. I felt very disconnected from all the characters in this book, and therefore wasn't invested in what happened to them, or had happened to them. YA is usually a genre that I love, even if I'm not in the intended age bracket, but maybe teens would better relate to Every You, Every Me than I did. Of course, I'm certainly not giving up on Levithan– I just won't be rereading this specific book of his.