Everything, Everything

by Nicola Yoon

[empressbrooke]

This book is trash. I've been on a roll lately with a bunch of contemporary YA novels where romance is a plot-line, but not the plot-line. They've all contained well written characters whose relationships (romantic and platonic) feel authentic and organic. Everything, Everything is A Romance, and it's eye-rollingly melodramatic and emotionally manipulative, and it does nothing to earn its manipulations. If you plan on reading this book and want to remain surprised about the end, walk away from this review right now.

The main character, Maddy, has never left her house because she has a rare disease that leaves her immunocompromised (think Bubble Boy but not a ridiculous comedy). Her only face-to-face contacts her whole life have been her mom and her full-time nurse. She reads lots of books and is home-schooled on the internet, but otherwise is sheltered from the outside world. I spent most of the first third of the book thinking, "I don't think this is how germs work...how is her mom able to be a doctor who is around patients and not bring home illnesses? I don't think a decontamination chamber would help that...? Why does the house need to expel all its air every 4 hours? What's wrong with the air that's in there once it's been filtered?"

And then at the 35% mark, when the main character mentions that they paid for all of her medical equipment with settlement money from when her dad and brother were killed by a trucker who fell asleep at the wheel, I thought, "Oh fuck no. We're gonna find out she's not really sick, and her mom just keeps her trapped in the house with this lie because she's afraid of losing her like she lost the rest of the family."

Aaaaaaand...nailed it.

There is just so much wrong with this twist. It's the sort of twist that belongs in a thriller or something less fluffy. It is utterly ridiculous when shoved into a teen romance novel where the two main characters are basically walking heart-eyes emojis.

The book doesn't grapple with the seriousness of this at all. None of the adults in the book even mention abuse or criminal charges. At one point, Maddy runs away and flies her sheltered ass off to Hawaii as if it was the sort of thing she did every day, and ends up in the hospital (being fake-sick left her unexposed to germs enough for her body to end up kinda-sick anyways). Somehow, her mom tracks her down and checks her out of the hospital against medical advice, despite the book also noting that Maddy is 18 at this point. Maddy wakes up at home, with her last conscious memory being in the hospital in Hawaii. So basically her mom checked out a legal adult AMA, kept her drugged on the plane ride home, and no one seems to be alarmed by this? How did this even work?

Maddy's full-time nurse doesn't seem to be put off by any of this at all. She's not disgusted by the deceit and false imprisonment. She's not offended that her nursing skills were wasted on someone who didn't need her. She continues hanging around in her paid position long after they find out Maddy isn't sick - why? Who's paying her? For what? Is there some sort of insurance fraud going on here? And she fucking gives Maddy guilt trips about not forgiving her mom. Because her mom did it out of love.

There is a whole awful theme throughout the book that "love makes you crazy." The book comes out and says these exact words. The author avoids referring to the mom losing the dad and brother as "trauma" or her actions as being part of "grief" - no, the book states that she loved so hard that she ended up in a prolonged state of psychosis where she actually believed Maddy was sick. When Maddy willingly risks certain death so she can kiss the first dude who says nice things to her, this is because "love makes you crazy." When the love interest dude's mom stays with her physically abusive husband, again the book proclaims, "Love makes you crazy."

Other negative reviews disapprove of how the book didn't portray the illness that Maddy was supposed to have accurately. This seems almost beside the point - she doesn't have an illness, she has a fucking abusive mom. But the abuse is painted as mental illness in a way that gives two middle fingers with an extra heaping of "fuck you" to people who actually have mental illness, and also manages to throw victims of both physical and mental abuse under the bus.

Although I also do throw out sympathy to anyone with a chronic physical illness who was excited about reading a book containing someone like them and then finding out that it was all a fucking charade. The author pretty much fucked everyone over.

So yeah. Trash.