Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon- Book Review

 Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon - Book Review

Title: Everything, Everything

Author: Nicola Yoon

Publisher: Ember

Publish Date: September 1 2015 

Rating: 4/5

Summary: Madeline F. Whittier hasn't left her house in seventeen years. She's also been alive for about that long. Madeline has a disease called SCID (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency), which basically makes her allergic to the whole world. The only people she sees in-person are her mother, who's a doctor, and her daytime nurse Carla. But one day, a family moves in next door, and there's a boy named Olly. Madeline and Olly trade emails and chat messages, and feelings emerge, but they can't meet....

**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.

I borrowed this book from the library, and was attracted to it because of the cover and summary on the back. I'd never heard of Nicola Yoon before, and this is my first time reading one of her novels- it turns out Everything, Everything is her debut novel! Anyways, I thought this would be just another overpredictable teenage love story with a creative twist, and it's partly that, but also partly not. 

Everything, Everything is slightly the teenage love story you'd expect, but its a bit more than that.

First off, the premise is very interesting, with the main character unable to leave her house for literal fear of death. Also, the witty humor and chemistry reminiscent of John Green brought me laughter at many points throughout the book. 

I had two favorite parts of the book: the small sections of word definitions and one-line book reviews interspersed in the book, and the chat messages between Olly and Madeline. 

First, I loved the various small humorous sections in the book, like a webpage describing hysterical abdominal rhopalocera as "the condition of having one or more monarch butterflies take up residence in the stomach and the spoiler reviews of various books like Lord of the Flies by William Golding ("Spoiler alert: Boys are savages"). These small sections made me laugh due to their wittiness and the true-but-in-an-unexpected-way humor style similar to that of John Green. 

However, more than the interspersed sections of sitty humor, the IMs were the best part of the book. As Madeline and Olly get to know each other they almost only communicate online through emails and IMs, and the chemistry between them is great even though they aren't meeting in person(and it gets even better when they do).  

I personally love books that have chat dialogue inside them, especially books like Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern where almost the whole book consists of online or mail communication. It's quite exciting to read chat messages interspersed with wit and humor, and that's exactly what Everything, Everything has. I adored these moments. Madeline and Olly have their first conversation through email, and it's interesting to see how they get to know more and like each other through text. 

One of the major themes in this book is risk-taking, since Madeline finds herself so overcome with love for Olly that she runs outside- where things could possibly literally kill her- as Olly is in a standoff against his always-drunk father. Of course, Olly tries to get Madeline back inside- he naturally doesn't want his love interest to die- and Madeline's mother is nearly hysterical due to Madeline's reckless behavior. 

However, later in the book, Madeline takes the greatest risk she's ever taken- she actually goes outside for a long period of time and travels to Hawaii with Olly. And here is the question that is asked by this book- do you live your life safe but lacking, or full and dangerous?

I would recommend this book for grade 5 and up, for the vocabularies included.

Rating: I would give this a 4/5.