We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can’t have both.
Rating: 2/5
Trigger Warnings: Mental illness, physical abuse (largely written in vague terms) Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
A romantic, unique take on a bildungsroman (coming of age novel), Everything, Everything explores the relationship between mother and daughter as 18 year old Maddie takes a liking to the new boy next door. In some ways, it is a typical ‘girl meets boy’ teen fiction, where next door neighbour Olly comes into Maddie’s life and shows her what she’s been missing. This, though, is an understatement: what Maddie’s been missing is a life outside of her home, contact with any human other than her mother and her nurse, Carla, and any desire to experience these things.
We learn quickly that Maddie has SCID (Severe Combined Immune Deficiency), a disorder which means her immune system is so weak that anything could set off severe illness in Maddie’s body. As the blurb describes it, Maddie is allergic to the world.
Except (and this is where we get spoiler-y) she isn’t, and it turns out her mum had actually been lying to since the tragic death of both Maddie’s dad and brother, an event which left her mum mentally ill. I won’t deny that this was expected the whole way through, but on the occasions when Maddie left her house or physically touched Olly and didn’t become sick it became more and more obvious that eventually we’d learn she was perfectly healthy.
Though Maddie’s immune system is always going to be weak (she’s 18 and never had contact with the outside world), by the end of the book she’s free to go explore the world just like she’d wanted to since Olly appeared in her life. A touching end with an optimistic message about doing what you want to do, and doing anything for love…but I can’t help feeling it was just a little bit disappointing. In some ways, I wanted to be heartbroken as Maddie learnt she genuinely was sick and she and Olly would have to learn to deal with it. Maddie being perfectly healthy and flying off to New York to be with Olly just felt a little too cliché. I wanted them to be together, sure, but if Maddie was going to end up being a perfectly healthy teenage girl, I wanted Maddie to live her life for herself, to see everything she hasn’t been able to, instead of just going to meet up with a boy.
As I mentioned earlier, in some ways it is a typical love story, making it a little predictable. As Olly and his family move in next door, Maddie is instantly intrigued and it’s beyond obvious that the two teenagers are going to become romantically involved. And this is another flaw. Yes, Maddie makes the decision to run away from home and has to convince Olly, and yes, Olly is the one who constantly worries for her health, but the way he appears in her life and suddenly she wants to go outside just felt a little bit too much like he was there to save her from her mother.
The way this book is written (emails, notes, and post-its printed throughout) makes it fun to read, and it’s short, easy to read, good for a poolside book on holiday, and I’m glad I read it, but I’m not as in love with it as I wanted to be.
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