Nicola Yoon’s Everything, Everything is a standalone novel. Madeline Whittier has not left her house once in seventeen years. She was born with a rare disease known as Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID), leaving her with no functioning immune system and an inability to defend herself against the simple microbes and bacteria we surround ourselves with every day. As a result, she lives in a white-walled home, breathing filtered air, following the same predictable schedule. But, when a new boy moves over next door, everything changes.
Despite being born with a debilitating condition, Maddie is remarkably content. She is happy with her home schooled life and content with the limited physical interaction she has with people. Instead of forming broad friendships, she bonds closely and intimately with the few people she knows. She shares an especially close relationship with her mother that is beautiful to witness. Of course, as Maddie falls in love, this relationship starts to deteriorate. She begins to keep more secrets, make more independent decisions, and becomes more suspicious of her mother.
Everything, Everything is an adorable read. The book’s relative shortness and artful graphics allow readers to fly through it. The story is compelling, despite its slow drawn out pace, giving it an addictive quality and allowing it to be read in one sitting. The slower pacing comes in complete opposition with the lightning fast pace of The Sun is Also a Star, but maintains the same captivating romance.
Like her succeeding book, the romance is achingly sweet with an undertone of unbelivabilty. The entire book is a straight shot of sugar directly into the veins, but plot points fall apart under close scrutiny.
While the book does have a love-at-first-sight feel, Maddie’s attraction can be explained by the fact that Olly, the love interest, is the first boy she’s ever met. However, Olly’s attraction to Maddie is a little strange considering there are many other girls who are much easier to date than Maddie.
Despite the circumstance of their meeting, both are beautifully written characters along with the rest of the small cast. Each character has a distinct personality and helps develop Maddie as a character.
The only glaring problem I had with this book is the extreme unlikeliness of Maddie’s condition. SCID is a very rare genetic condition that mostly appears in boys. It almost never appears in girls, as the father would have to have the condition in order to pass it on to his daughter. Unfortunately, having a severally compromised immune system doesn’t bode well with living to reproductive age, nor ease in finding a spouse to have sexual relations with. While this was off-putting to me and might annoy some biology or genetic major, the average reading audience will be fine with this book.