Every Day, published in 2012, is a Young Adult novel by David Levithan. The novel tells the story of A, a disembodied spirit who wakes up in the body of a different person each day. A has no control over the gender, race, location, or appearance of the bodies they occupy, and they never occupy the same body twice. Comfortable living as both male and female, A is non-binary and does not exclusively identify with a particular gender. At the start of the novel, while inhabiting the body of a high school student named Justin, A makes an unexpectedly profound connection with Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. As A and Rhiannon grow closer, A begins to question the limits of life as a disembodied spirit, attempting to have a stable and lasting relationship with another person for the first time.
On his website, Levithan writes that there were two questions he wanted to answer with Every Day: “First, what would it be like to be a person who grew up without gender, race, sexual orientation, parents, friends, and all of the other things we usually classify ourselves by, and, second, what would it be like to be in love with someone who changed every day – would it be possible?” Every Day’s inventive exploration of these questions earned Levithan widespread acclaim. In his New York Times book review, Frank Bruni specifically praises Levithan’s handling of a storyline involving depression, writing that it “demonstrates Levithan’s talent for empathy, which is paired in the best parts of the book with a persuasive optimism about the odds for happiness and for true love.” The novel was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Young Adult/Children’s Literature, as well as the winner of the Booklist Editor’s Choice: Books for Youth Award.
Every Day also enjoyed commercial success, becoming a New York Times bestseller. Levithan subsequently wrote two sequels, Another Day, which is a retelling of Every Day through Rhiannon’s eyes, and Someday, a continuation of A and Rhiannon’s stories. A film adaptation of Every Day was released in 2018 staring Angourie Rice and Justice Smith. The film garnered generally favorable reviews, receiving a 63% positive rating on rottentomatoes.com.
