#plus hollywood casting a half-black half-asian actress is a tall order

[t-oresama]

“Everything, Everything” by Nicola Yoon

Synopsis: My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean, and wearing all black-- black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly. Maybe we can't predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It's almost certainly going to be a disaster.

Published: 2015 (Delacorte Press) Genre: Young Adult, Fiction Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Reader Review: This book has been on my radar for months. I first saw the cover of it on a normal day at work at the library. I adore this cover, by the way; it's illustrated by Nicola Yoon's husband, David Yoon, and it's vibrant and eye-catching and... everything (ha) that I would want a book cover to be. Anyway, soon after, I found out it was going to be a movie, which is also something that has been and still is on my radar. But before the movie, I wanted to be that person that I've been with similar books-turned-movie adaptations (such adaptations including "The Fault in Our Stars" and "My Sister's Keeper") and get to know the source material to better compare that to the movie. Turns out, as is the case with many books that people discover a recently-released movie originated from, there were many holds on many copies of this book. I was #14 on the list. Yet three days later, the book arrived and all but fell into my lap. Chalk it up to a working of the Library Network gods.

The story itself revolves around a sickly girl named Maddy, who is otherwise actually a healthy girl save for the fact that she has Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), a disease that prevents her from mingling with the outside world for fear of anything triggering the illness. She lives in a sterilized, air-locked house that she has not left since infancy with her single mother and (legitimate) nurse, Pauline; her father and brother were killed in a car crash around the time of Maddy's diagnosis. One day, neighbors move in across the street, including a boy Maddy's age, named Olly. Despite never leaving her house, the two manage to strike up a friendship that develops into more over time, as they face adversities that affect their everyday lives between Maddy's disease and Olly living with an alcoholic father. So, yes, even though I just said in the last review that romances aren't usually my bag, I fell as head over heels with this one as Olly does with Maddy. I would say "Whoops", but I can't really find myself feeling bad for reading another "not another teen romance" novel.

To start (well, aside from me starting off with needless praising of the book's mere cover), it's been quiet a while, possibly since "The Elephant Man" (review here), since I've read a book and it became all I thought about. Waiting for any spare moment of time to pick it up and continue on. Wondering, "And then what???" That was, of course, until this book. I literally could not put it down; I chipped away at it between work breaks and breakfast and afterwards dedicated my morning off to finishing it, taking a grand total of 8 hours for me to complete. The main reason for this is because, as was the case with "Eleanor & Park", I love when people can do a trope/cliche (the "teen love story" one, in this case), and do something to freshen it up and make it more than its stereotype. I was fascinated by the idea of a "limited love", especially for teenagers who get distracted by technology and hormones in the modern age (only a slight exaggeration, let's be real). A "limited love" where they have to go the extra mile in order to be with and communicate with that person, and where the conflict isn't just "one of them cheats"/"they get into a fight"/"they have to separate to go to different colleges", etc. Because, well, that's boring, especially when you're living it/have lived it. And it prompts the author to get creative while also keeping it realistic, something I feel Yoon did to a tee with the situation she created. So give me something with a twist-- in this case, a girl who could die if she even touches a non-decontaminated boy-- and I'm sold. 

Speaking of creativity of the author-- and this may just be a case of me not having read enough YA novels from this decade-- but Yoon takes the creativity to the presentation as much as she does the subject matter. Her short chapters aren't just dialogue and paragraphs; sometimes they're pictures or journal entries "hand-written" by the narrator, Maddy, sometimes they're "realistic pictures" of things that propel the story forward, such as medical documents or plane tickets, and sometimes they're e-mails and instant message conversations. It adds that multi-media flare that encompasses new young love nowadays (boy, do I feel old for writing that), and shows the progression of Maddy and Olly's relationship, from a person Maddy wistfully watches from her window, to a crush and, eventually, to love. However, this does act as a double-edged sword. It forces the reader to read between the lines and interpret a deeper meaning from some of these e-mails and IMs. Text is so two-dimensional and without the interjections of the narrator’s thoughts and feelings as I've seen done in other books, some chapters are just completely IMs where we have to imagine how they're "saying" this, what they're feeling when they're "saying" this, how long between each message they paused or backspaced before continuing on. We have to assume it's what the story has set itself up to eventually be, but sometimes it could be taken in a few different contexts. Art imitating real life first-world problems.

There are four major players in this book: Maddy, Olly, Maddy's mother, Pauline and Maddy's nurse while her mom is at work, Carla. The relationship with Maddy and her mom is depicted as such a loving one, as her mom really is Maddy's best friend given her limited interaction with other people. And Maddy has that type of friendly relationship with Carla as well, having known her since she was 3 (she's 18 in the present day of this novel). However, rather than being shown as a lonely girl wanting friends and the beach and escape, she's shown as a girl who has for so long dealt with her disease and its limitations, she knows that hoping for more is not possible, and never lets herself. Instead, she absorbs herself in copious amounts of reading, her online studies, and special game nights with her mom. It's set up so that, when she meets Olly, not only does her heart open up in a way it never has, but so does her entire perspective on life. She wants more, dares to be a dreamer, because the world brought her Olly, and there's so much more the world could bring her if she goes for it. Her relationship with Olly is one that is new for both of them in different ways, and the pacing of their relationship is well done and believable, with no act being done too fast or too slow, and the only limitation (most of the time) being Maddy's illness. However, the way that her relationship with her mother is portrayed is one that can make your heart feel warmed more than some scenes with her and Olly. They are dependent on each other; they're all the other one has. And they have such genuine and tender mother-daughter moments, it made me want to go and play a board game with my own mom. I think this speaks to Maddy herself, as she doesn't have many people she can be around, so she cherishes each relationship with those in her very small circle, and it shows. 

Now to the part where I answer the burning question of, "But if there's so much good about it, why is it only a 4.5?" Well, for one, I'm very selective and often skeptical of what a "perfect" book is. I can see by the source material why they wanted to make this a movie, in the same vein as the aforementioned "The Fault in Our Stars" (which also has that "dying girl love story" premise, now that I think about it...). It's different, dramatic yet still realistic and tugs at your heartstrings. But there are details omitted in this novel that I felt would have given me a better, fuller picture. One thing that bothered me was the lack of details pertaining to Maddy and Olly's families. There are a lot of details about Maddy's family already, but despite all of this, her father and brother are never given names, and her brother's age at his time of death is never specified. All that's said in regards to the latter is that Maddy was only a few months' old when the car crash that killed him and their father happened. But by making them nameless, they could be anyone. It's less personal and you don't feel the tugs of sympathy for the family that you should because these two are more just "there" than they are characters that serve the story as a whole. Olly's home life is the same. Maddy jots down the happenings of each family member from what she observes outside of her window, so we get to know bits about them by the bits Maddy knows. Olly's father-- also nameless-- does serve a greater purpose for the dynamic of the entire family, but we never get to know any of the other family members outside of their toxic relationships. And sometimes, Olly comes off as a very typical too-cool, rebel, loner kid, always wearing black and being really into parkour for no explained reason. And his e-mail name is "genericuser033," for crying out loud. While he does open up, and we do see both that he is more than his rebellious persona and that he also is that way for a reason, things like this just make me cringe a little. This is how teens can be though, so I'm probably nit-picking at this point. To continue nit-picking, one scene that left me confused due entirely to its lack of clarity is when-- semi-spoiler-- Maddy's mother does eventually find out about Olly, and Maddy indicates that it's because of a black rubber band she accidentally leaves on her nightstand that Olly likes to wear and fidget around with, but we're never given any explanation: Does her mom just know because it's something she's never seen before? Does she know because she's seen Olly wearing it? And what is the significance of that rubber band anyway? It's not a hair tie, as Olly is described to us as a boy with really short hair, so why did he give it to Maddy? And when? So many questions for a little rubber band but, really, it does make all the difference.

Some of this is, as I wrote, splitting hairs, but books are written to enjoy first and critique second. Not just authors, but all artists of all mediums pick and pick at the tiniest so-called imperfections in their work, but because of that, a lot of them know how to take constructive criticism. I can't help but feel like Yoon could be one of those authors. Especially for this being her debut novel (Having your first book be a movie? You have to admit that that's pretty amazing), I'm sure she herself could look back and pick parts she would want to change now with a couple more novels under her belt. In the end, "Everything, Everything" does give us everything (everything): romance, comedy, a healthy blend of serious and light-hearted moments, and drama. Especially drama. I won't spoil it for you, but the last fifty pages are probably the best part of the entire novel. There's a twist that caught me so off-guard and also answered my burning question of "How are they going to overcome this???" so brilliantly, I'm still reeling over it. It's so good, and is extremely poignant. It's one of those twists that makes you go back and reread certain earlier excerpts in a new light and just... I could go on. Instead, I'll use these last few lines to urge you, if you like YA, to read this book. I feel like it's the quintessential 2010s YA novel. It has a copious amount of multi-media insertions, while also giving nods to both modern and classic references. It tackles heavy issues. It's quirky and sometimes sarcastic. But overall it was such a lovely book to binge-read. If I didn't have a literal stack of books to read, I'd reread it and look for more details lost on me the first time reading. What I'll do now, with cautious optimism, is go and see the movie, and pray that whatever liberties taken for the movie aren't ones that make me disenchanted with this enchanting story.