Book Review: 'Everything, Everything' by Nicola Yoon

I'll tell you one thing: this started off promising. It really did. When I started Everything, Everything, I got the feeling that it would destroy me emotionally and leave me in a book hangover. But, as a lot of contemporary YA books do, it soon fell into cliché, overly cheesy and sometimes completely unrealistic territory.

Everything, Everything follows 18-year-old Madeline, who is sick with a rare illness in which she is essentially allergic to everything, and going outside is too big a risk. So, she stays inside her house all day every day, going to school online and the only interaction she has is with her mother and Carla, her nurse. Her love for reading is just as big as her desire to live a normal life. But then, oh then, a boy moves in next door, Olly, whose got family problems of his own. You see where this is going.

While the premise sounds like a thousand other YA books, I'll admit that the premise of Madeline's illness sounded interesting to me. It didn't quite sound like she was going to die (which she doesn't; that isn't really a spoiler), so I was intrigued to see where this book was going to go. But as it went on, it slowly lost its pzazz. A lot of chapters had barely any dialogue; just Madeline obsessing over anything. Having never been able to leave the house, I kind of understood her overthinking of things at first, but then I stopped giving her the time of day. She was just being "typical teenage girl" melodramatic after awhile. Not only that, the entire prose became melodramatic. Maybe I would have been into it if the story hadn't started to lose me, but even then, it did. But, at the same time, I just couldn't figure out where the story was going to go, so I still had motivation to continue reading.

Toppled with stereotypical teen melodrama, Everything, Everything just becomes unrealistic. At one point, Madeline just gets the urge to run outside and protect Olly during a family spat, surprising everyone. Okay, no. You expect us to believe a girl who has supposedly never left the house just gets the urge to run outside? Does she even know how to do that? All for her precious Olly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing special to see here. Madeline then somehow applies for a credit card and seems to get one, no questions asked, and book a trip to Hawaii. At this point, I was just laughing and rolling my eyes while reading. I know there are some readers who would buy this in a YA book, but I'm not one of them.

Olly's story wasn't anything particularly special, either. His father is abusive and became so after losing his job, yadda yadda yadda. It seems the author put zero effort in making that story unique in any way; bland as bland could be. Father becomes abusive because he lost his job has been seen many other times. At this point, Everything, Everything started to remind me of All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, except in that book, more is left up to the imagination about the male character's home life, which I thought was much more effective.

So, the ending? Well, I will not spoil it, but it is ridiculous. I have never seen an ending like it before in YA, but that does not mean it is a good thing. I think the author thought she was being unique and trying to surprise teenage readers who, again, would buy it in a story, but I like to think I'm a little too advanced of a reader to buy it. Would I recommend Everything, Everything? Depends; if you like any cheesy YA book ever, I think you'll like it. If you're like me and like to read YA looking for new approaches/additions to the genre, nope. Skip it. 3/5 stars.