Everything I Thought I Knew

by Shannon Takaoka

A teenage girl wonders if she’s inherited more than just a heart from her donor in this compulsively readable debut.

Seventeen-year-old Chloe had a plan: work hard, get good grades, and attend a top-tier college. But after she collapses during cross-country practice and is told that she needs a new heart, all her careful preparations are laid to waste. Eight months after her transplant, everything is different. Stuck in summer school with the underachievers, all she wants to do now is grab her surfboard and hit the waves—which is strange, because she wasn’t interested in surfing before her transplant. (It doesn’t hurt that her instructor, Kai, is seriously good-looking.) And that’s not all that’s strange. There’s also the vivid recurring nightmare about crashing a motorcycle in a tunnel and memories of people and places she doesn’t recognize. Is there something wrong with her head now, too, or is there another explanation for what she’s experiencing? As she searches for answers, and as her attraction to Kai intensifies, what she learns will lead her to question everything she thought she knew—about life, death, love, identity, and the true nature of reality.

• ISBN10: 1536207764
• ISBN13: 9781536207767
• Publish Date: 13 October 2020
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Candlewick Press,U.S.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781536207767

Reviews

[Sam@WLABB]

A familiar tale with a twist.

After receiving a heart transplant, Chloe starts just knowing things and being able to do things, things she suspects her came from her donor. This was the familiar part, but then Takaoka took it up a notch as Chloe pondered the idea of the multiverse. As a lover of science, that definitely caught my attention, but I also loved the overarching themes about not being able to control everything that happens, no matter how much your plan or do, and living each day to the fullest.

Full review to follow

*ARC provided in exchange for an honest review.

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[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from LibraryThing Early Reviewers and Candlewick Press in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Mixed feelings on this one.

On one hand, lets take a moment to ogle that beautiful cover?  Those colors, the artwork, it's simple but it's beautiful and I love it.

On the other hand, I struggled with this one.  It's a very readable book, but it didn't feel real.  Which I know is a stupid thing to say about a book, especially one where I cannot compare to the characters and story situation in so many ways.  Chloe seems like a nice enough person, but she's the only character I felt we actually got to know.  The other characters in this book felt very much like supporting figures, less people than devices to move the plot.  It bothered me, I guess.

This general lack of depth was a running theme in Everything I Thought I Knew.  I know nothing about the trauma of a major surgery at a young age and the way it changes a life.  But Chloe's behavior felt so much like a carbon copy of many other contemporary YA characters where a good-student-decides-it-doesn't-matter-and-she-wants-to-enjoy-her-life.  Everyone felt like a trope - Jane's Misunderstood Bad Girl, Kai's Sweet Athlete Love Interest... none of the characters popped off the page.

The story, similarly, moved in a jagged place, like puzzle pieces forced to fit where they don't belong.  At first, I thought it was a basic issue-focused contemporary.  Then it started to feel science fiction.  Then a ghost story.  The whole thing felt disconnected, a forced story.  I'm not sure how well researched the cellular memory parts were - many stories like this will have an addendum or author's notes or something that talks about the scientific aspect and where the story idea came from.  Because this is a ARC, I'm not sure if it was missing just because of the unfinished nature, or because... there is no section like that.  I feel like the lack of knowing here affected my ability to trust or appreciate the reading, because my instinct was that it felt too convenient to the sort, too overblown... not real.  And that may be completely unfair.  But it bothered me.

Still, despite my hesitation over the depth of the characters and reliability of information driving the plot, this was a generally enjoyable book.  Really, it was!  It's a light and easy read, only took me a couple days and that was at the end of a readathon where I was starting to burn out.  The original concept was compelling - heart transplant, and how does life change.  I was even on board for the cellular memory bit as clever and uncommon, though I felt it could have been tightened up a bit.  It's certainly not a book I regret reading, nor was a miserable while reading it.  It's an "I'm glad I read it, but I don't want to keep it forever" book, and the world needs those, too.