Heyo Bookaholics!

This book took me a whole month to finish…Why?!

SPOILERS AHEAD! If you want to read, this may not make sense unless you’ve read Every day by David Leviathan, the first book in this trilogy.

Someday is the third book in the Every Day series, and the sequel to the first novel Every day. This is because the second novel, Another day is a retelling of Every day but in Rhiannon’s point of view. There is also a novella titled, Six days earlier in the same series.

Blurb:

Every day a new body. Every day a new life. Every day a new choice.

For as long as A can remember, life has meant waking up in a different person's body every day, forced to live as that person until the day ended. A always thought there wasn't anyone else who had a life like this.

But A was wrong. There are others.

A has already been wrestling with powerful feelings of love and loneliness. Now comes an understanding of the extremes that love and loneliness can lead to—and what it's like to discover that you are not alone in the world.

In Someday, David Levithan takes readers further into the lives of A, Rhiannon, Nathan, and the person they may think they know as Reverend Poole, exploring more deeply the questions at the core of Every Day and Another Day: What is a soul? And what makes us human?

REVIEW!

I started this book with medium hopes (if that makes any sense…). I was super impressed when I read Every day, then Another day let me down heaps, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into this one.

While reading I took note of specific pages…

*sudden realisation dawns that I do not have my book next to me right now*

As I was saying – now that I have my book with me – I took note of specific pages which I wanted to quote in this review as triggers for conversation, but mostly because this novel is very very quotable. And because of this, I am going to do this review in a different way, by using those quotes to guide and trigger talking points for the review.

Okay, here goes!

Page 48: “Why am I here? … Because that’s the thing about my life – nobody asks me anything. And if nobody’s asking, it’s easy to keep all the answers on the shelf, gathering dust. I can forget they exist. I can avoid them.” – A

This part of the novel hit me really hard.

So a little background. This novel is unlike the first two and is written in multiple points of view that very rarely overlap to tell a cohesive story. Unlike some novels with multiple points of view, I never felt myself favouring one character over another and each character had their own unique voice which made it very easy to pick who was talking. I also very much liked Rhiannon’s voice in this novel as opposed to in Another day, although I think it is because she has matured in this novel and we can visibly pick her character progression from the two novels. We still see the old conflict that still plagues her but this time with the air of surety and determination to get what she wants.

There was also an online chat that would pop up in parts of the novel where A was able to be A and not have to pose as the person that they inhabited for that day, in which we get this wonderful quote. A is a very philosophical character who wants to understand life and it’s complexities but is too scared of what they will find.

Page 194: “We’re told that the most powerful words in the world are ‘I love you.’ And while I think those are powerful, I think equally powerful is this phrase: I have started to know you, and I want to know more.” – SOMEONE

There is so so so much love displayed in this novel, and mostly romantic love between A and Rhiannon which irked me a little because Rhiannon is chasing someone she cannot be with while her boundry-respecting boyfriend is back at home.

Throughout the novel, I had constant thoughts of Rhiannon taking advantage of Alexander (her boyfriend) or not realising any more than A, that she is cheating. This thought was always in the back of my mind but as I finished the book, everything was cleaned and summed up as one.

“I have started to know you, and I want to know more,” is the most beautiful book quote because it explains relationships so well. People are a mystery and you’ll never know them fully. That’s why we stay, to learn everything we can in the time we have together, and it really articulates what A wants in a relationship with a person.

Page 202: “I met Liam at the Melbourne Writers Festival. I was Peter at the time.” – AEMON, AGE 18

All throughout the novel, there were these seemingly random one-off points of view of other people, one of these people being Aemon, who we find out is just like A.

I personally think this quote is the most perfect chapter starter in the history of opening lines and I want it taped up on my wall. It also reminded me of that short story written by Michael Earp in the Underdog anthology in which he wrote a meet-cute set at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Part of the novel takes place in New York for various reasons, one of these being A’s meetings with X, the villain of our novel. X identifies as a male and was introduced in Every day in the body of a priest by the name of Poole.

In one such trip to New York, Rhiannon and A are at an art gallery looking at an impressionist’s painting of ballet dancers, where Rhiannon speaks the following quote.

Page 226: “…there’s something different with the impressionists. They recognize that their subjects are constantly changing, and that they’re not only capturing one moment… They’re saying this is just one of the ways you could see [a scene or person]. This is the way they saw it . . . and then it was over. Only I caught some of it. I managed to get some of it down, before I, too, was gone.” – RHIANNON

Rhiannon seems to unknowingly sum up how A must feel moving from body to body each day. Only seeing a snippet of a person’s life, capturing it the way they see it… and then the day is over. They have a memory of a single day, before they, too, are gone.

And whilst this novel has a plot, a climax, a solution with a bittersweet ending, it is highly character-driven and that is what I take away from Someday. I chose to not talk about the plot and where it leads because that is not what is being focused on or accentuated by David Levithan. The entire focus is on the characters, their development, morals and how they cope with the cards that life has dealt them.

The choices A makes are not always for themselves but otherwise for Rhiannon because she seems to be their purpose in life, their grounding. In a world where everything changes daily, Rhiannon is constant.

For Rhiannon, A is her adventure and another place her love goes. In the end, she learns “that the heart has the capacity to love so many people” including herself. Where she cannot be with A romantically, she doesn’t have to give her love fully to one person, rather share it amongst many including; Alexander, A, her old friends, her new friends, and herself.

Page 387: “‘It appears,’ I say, ‘we are much more alike than we ever could have imagined.’ – LIAM, AGE 18

This is the best part to end on because with only one chapter I had fallen in love with Aemon and his meet-cute romance, which comes back at the end of the novel but in Liam’s point of view! Liam is also a ‘body-jumper’ and this is just the cutest line in the novel because fate brought two people together who wholely understand what it is like to be like the other. I almost cried in this moment!!!

★ Rating ★

As with the first novel in this series, I rated this book ★★★★★ (5/5 stars). Levithan’s voice in this whole series is wonderful and so lovely to read. It portrays so so much emotion and just makes me want to keep reading forever.

I hope you enjoyed this very different kind of review which was highly quote-driven, focusing heavily on the characters as opposed to the actual storyline. I think it was most fitting for this kind of multi-perspective novel.

Thank you for reading! Please drop a comment telling me your thoughts on the review and if you’ve read the novel, what your thoughts are of it!

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With Love Bree xx