Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

Summary from Goodreads:

My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla.

But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He’s tall, lean and wearing all black—black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking and stares at me. I stare right back. His name is Olly.

Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.

Review:

I really enjoyed this book. I’m not sure I loved it as much as everyone else seemed to. But, it was one of those books that kept me up late. I needed to read until I finished. And lately, those have been rare. I read this in one day. That does say something.

That being said, I loved this until about the 80% mark. I can’t really talk about what happens after that point without seriously spoiling the whole book, so I won’t talk about it. However, that last 20% drastically effected my overall enjoyment and rating. It was kind of a hard book to rate for me. I literally loved it until that point.

I loved the idea of this story. I was so curious to see how a story about a girl this sick, so sick she literally was never able to leave her house, could end up being in a love story. I loved Madeline’s relationship with her mother and her nurse. I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to only ever see my mom and a nurse every day of my existence. I felt so bad for all the things Madeline could not see, feel, experience, and love.

I also fell in love with Olly, along side her. They developed their relationship over the internet, with emails and instant messages. And I loved that they got to know each other that way. Their banter and back and forth dialog was some serious YA contemporary gold. I loved every second of it. This book had some definite John Green and Rainbow Rowell vibes going for it, and honestly, is there a better compliment?

That being said, I was very disappointed about where things went at the end. Sometimes I feel like authors have two choices: the easy route and the hard. And this author definitely picked the easier route. She did set it up from the beginning. It didn’t come out of nowhere. I just wish she took the harder route and emphasized the importance of one thing over another.

Vagueness aside, I did mostly fall in love with this book. I read it in record time. I loved the dialogue, wit, and romance. The characters and relationships were fantastic. I was not a fan of the end. I give it an 8/10. It was a good debut and I will definitely have to check out more from this author in the future.