There are spoilers ahead for Every Day. For as long as they can remember, A has woken up in a different body every day. They thought they’d live a life alone with that secret until they fell in love with Rhiannon, the first person to ever know the truth about them. Then A discovered that they weren’t the only one like themselves–there were others out there, and despite the threat that the being who called himself Reverend Poole (X) presented, A finds it almost irresistible to talk to someone else who’s experienced the same thing. They might finally find answers to their questions: What are they? Where did they come from? And would it be possible to have a life with Rhiannon? Trigger warnings: death, injury, violence, threats, stalking.
My feelings about books don’t usually change over the course of the series, but this is easily my favorite in the trilogy. It’s not perfect, but I really like the way it’s done. The ensemble cast brings back A’s and Rhiannon’s voices, along with Nathan’s, X’s, and a few others who are like A and X. Ensemble casts can be hit or miss, but I really enjoyed having more voices in this story. As A is discovering more about themselves, we’re discovering that there are many more like them out there; it’s a sense that the world is only just beginning to open up. If there was something I didn’t like about that, it was that so much of the crossover among those voices only comes at the end, if it comes at all. It’s realistic, sure, but I like having the sense that everything is connected in my fiction.
If Another Day was Rhiannon’s learning experience, Someday is A’s. They have some difficult choices to make about whether to engage with X again, and what the right thing to do even is in that situation. X essentially kills people to stay for longer than a day in their bodies, but he is also the only one like them that A has ever met. Rhiannon’s transformation is nothing short of miraculous. She’s no longer the girl determined to hide herself in order to keep the peace. Her positive relationships with A and Alexander have helped her be the best version of herself, and she provides a steady compass of morality and truth for A, even while they navigate what their relationship is and how to move forward with it. X’s perspective is like peeking into the mind of a psychopath–no empathy, no remorse–and they’re a chilling look at what happens when someone like A goes the opposite direction. Since he can change bodies any time he likes, there’s no accountability. His conversations with A are genuinely frightful since they’re so at odds with how we know him from his own perspective; evil can sound so reasonable.
The pace is somewhat off. With A waking up in a different body every day, there have always been logistical problems with getting them and Rhiannon on the page together, but it’s worse here. The problem with splitting characters up at the end of a first novel is that Levithan is forced to spend half of this one bringing them back together, and not a lot happens in those pages. It feels a bit repetitive, especially since Rhiannon is going over basically the same issues she had with a relationship with A in the first book. That goes in a good direction though, and while it’s not what I expected, I like where they end up. I also like the further exploration of A’s gender identity and how it isn’t just being in different bodies that makes them nonbinary (X identifies as male regardless of the body he’s in). It’s a cool, unique way of looking at nongendered characters, and I always feel like Levithan approaches this and other issues with respect and insight. Someday is probably my favorite so far of his solo novels.
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