Book Review: Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

ISBN: 0553496646
Expected publication: September 1st, 2015
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Read from June 18th to July 25th, 2015
Synopsis from Goodreads:

This innovative, heartfelt debut novel tells the story of a girl who’s literally allergic to the outside world. When a new family moves in next door, she begins a complicated romance that challenges everything she’s ever known. The narrative unfolds via vignettes, diary entries, texts, charts, lists, illustrations, and more.
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 enjoyed this book a lot. The premise of it drew me in immediately. I've never come across another book about a character with SCID. A story that revolves around a girl who hasn't been allowed to leave her house since she was a baby sounded intriguing, and I would say that it lived up to that intrigue for the most part.

There is a plot twist that I saw coming fairly early on. Actually, I considered it, and then I sort of had the thought, "There's no way that's actually what will happen." I thought it sounded like too much of a cop out of sorts, but when it happened, it didn't actually have me feeling that way as much as I thought it would. I still don't know if I like that the book went that way or not, but I dealt with it and still found it to be a good book overall. The way the twist is played out was better than I had imagined it possibly going in my head. It didn't feel like quite as much of a cop out, but it did have this too good to be true feeling to it. Although the very end of the book felt unrealistic to me as I'm not really sure how that would play out if the book had carried on past that point.

That was my only "issue" with the book though, and I'm not even sure it could be considered an issue. This book was a fun, entertaining read. I really enjoyed how diverse it was from depicting SCID to racially diverse characters. I don't think I'd ever read a book before where the main character is half black and half Japanese. I appreciated that.

The book also includes romance, but the romance felt like it was of a lesser importance than romances often are in YA books. I liked that. I thought it was a good level of romance for the story, and I was happy that it didn't take away from other aspects of the story.

If this book captures your attention at all, I would say that it's worth a read. It's very enjoyable, and I appreciated it a lot, even if there were a few parts of the story that didn't necessarily hold up for me.

I received this book through Netgalley for an honest review.