Not EVERY book is for ME

Every You, Every Me
By: David Levithan
Photographs by: Johnathan Farmer
Received from: Publisher
Reported by: Julianna Helms

In this high school-set psychological tale, a tormented teen named Evan starts to discover a series of unnerving photographs—some of which feature him. Someone is stalking him . . . messing with him . . . threatening him. Worse, ever since his best friend Ariel has been gone, he's been unable to sleep, spending night after night torturing himself for his role in her absence. And as crazy as it sounds, Evan's starting to believe it's Ariel that's behind all of this, punishing him. But the more Evan starts to unravel the mystery, the more his paranoia and insomnia amplify, and the more he starts to unravel himself. Creatively told with black-and-white photos interspersed between the text so the reader can see the photos that are so unnerving to Evan, Every You, Every Me is a one-of-a-kind departure from a one-of-a-kind author.

-Summary from Goodreads

Every You, Every Me is a tale interwoven with haunting pictures that takes a new spin on what it means to be the one left behind.

Psychological novels aren't usually my thing, and while Every You, Every Me didn't exactly make it my new favorite genre, it certainly widened my taste to new aspects. The plot was delicately handled and swept with angst, showcased through strike-out lines. I feel like the strike-outs were a tad  overused, but it did manage to add tension to Evan's character and feelings.

The characters weren't all three-dimensional. The only person I could really sense was Evan, and even then, all I knew about him was angst, angst, angst. The ending, however, introduced a new side of him that I wish we could have watched recovering along with. Instead Evan spends the first 99% of the book in self-denial/destruct/deprecate, so when the ending came and he finally stepped up from the shadow of his absent best friend, Ariel, it felt too sudden and clean-cut to be the same guy.

Through and through, though, Every You, Every Me provided the type of atmosphere you'd expect in a psychological tale of reconstruct, and I do appreciate that. I'll definitely be checking out more David Levithan books in the future, but I have a feeling his psychological books and other picturesque novels won't be for me.