In Someone Else's Shoes

In Someone Else's Shoes

By Madeleine D. 

David Levithan is an editorial director for Scholastic Corporation. Published in 2012, Every Day is his most recent published novel. The story line of this book is a change of pace from his usual works, which usually have a strong male gay character as the lead.

With a similar writing style as John Green and Nicholas Sparks, David Levithan writes humorous yet heartwarming love stories. In Levithan's young adult fiction novel, Every Day, he tells the story of a teenager that goes by the name of "A". Each day the main character, A, is itself and someone else at the same time. A must try to be true to himself while living out an infinite number of strangers' lives. Waking up in a different teenager's body every morning sounds impossible to the average person, but it is simply the norm for A. This character chooses not to have attachments to anything or anyone, because of the fact the same body has never been inhabited more than once. Once A meets Rhiannon, an instant connection can not be helped, and everything changes.

I loved how each individual the main character inhabits is introduced with a unique story. Each host has a life of their own, and A must adapt to living out the lives of these people as normally as possible. Levithan did a great job of developing characters that readers can connect to. Some of the young adults in this book dealt with issues that people deal with everyday, and it gave me insight to what people deal with daily.

The theme of this book is based on the question, "what makes us who we are?" Throughout the book this topic is referred to repeatedly each time a new character is introduced.  It had me questioning what qualities each person in the novel had that set them apart from everyone else.

The plot took a while to develop, but once it thickened it made for a story I really enjoyed reading.  However, the pacing of the beginning of the novel was too slow for my taste.  Having read Levithan's work in the past, I would most definitely recommend this book. This book would probably be best suited for young adults, but a great read for anyone able to comprehend topics such as identity crisis.

This book can be found at a local bookstore or public library.

Every Day, by David Levithan, Alfred A. Knopf New York, August 2012, 324 pages