* This review contains spoilers! *
Everything, Everything
Nicola Yoon
310 Pages
YA - Contemporary, Romance
Everything, Everything, though a quick and easy read, was probably one of the best books I've read. Madeline Whittier is a girl who has lived her whole life in a sterilized, filtered house with nurses who take care of her during the day and her mother, who is a doctor, taking care of her in the evening. She is said to have Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, or SCID, an extremely rare disease in which there is a severe defect in both the T- & B-lymphocyte systems. (
www.scid.net) Basically, you're allergic to the world. You can't go outside, you can't interact with people, and you miss out on living your life because of this. Madeline, or Maddy, has learned to live with this, though, and is content with her life... Until she meets Oliver Bright.
Oliver "Olly" Bright moves in across the street from Maddy, and they quickly become friends. They IM and e-Mail back and forth into the wee hours of the morning, and unbeknownst to them, are deeply in love. Okay, rewind. After Olly and his family move in across the street, he and his sister bring the Whittier's a "hello" gift. After Mrs. Whittier profusely denies the gift and shuts the door on the siblings, Olly becomes more curious of Madeline. They start by just writing to each other and miming at the windows across from each other, and eventually move to IM and e-Mail.
Carla, Maddy's nurse and probably her favorite person on the planet, notices that Madeline is hiding something, and eventually finds out about Olly. After hounding and begging Carla, Madeline convinces her to let Olly come over for a visit while her mom, Pauline, is at work. They visit about once a week, and eventually, they end up kissing.
All is well for a while, until one night when Olly's father, an abusive alcoholic, starts beating on Olly who is defending his mother. Madeline, ignoring her mother completely, runs out to make sure Olly is okay and is dragged back home. Pauline begins demanding to know what is going on and Maddy tells her. Carla is fired, though Maddy begs her mom not to, and Pauline takes off of work to take care of Madeline until a replacement nurse is hired.
The replacement nurse is all business. She only allows Maddy the internet to do schoolwork, no phone, only things that she cannot use to communicate to anyone. At this point, Maddy is depressed. She misses Carla, she's mad at her mom, she hates her new nurse, and all she does is spend time alone. Until she decides she's had enough. She leaves a note for her mom, buys plane tickets to Hawaii, packs a bag, and heads to Olly's. Olly is obviously concerned for her safety, but Maddy lies and tells him that she's taking these new pills that are on trial and she will be okay. Reluctantly, but excitedly, he agrees to go with her to Hawaii.
In Hawaii, they eat, dance, swim in the ocean, and they also end up having sex. That was quick, wasn't it? They hardly knew each other, kissed some, couldn't talk to each other for months, and now they're in bed together. Anyway, Maddy starts to get really sick. She ends up in the hospital and her mom is called to come and get her. Maddy gets taken home where her mom never leaves her side.
Maddy eventually gets better, but Olly's mom ends up leaving her abusive husband which means that Olly and his sister leave with her. Maddy still can't talk to anybody because her mom's afraid she's going to run off again. One day, Maddy gets an email from the doctor who cared for her in Hawaii that pretty much said "You don't have SCID." A little back story before we get to the twist, Maddie lost her father and brother in a car accident when she was younger. Of course this means that her mother only had a daughter left and she would do anything to keep her safe, as any mother would. "Anything" includes secluding her only child and telling her that she's allergic to the world. The whole facade is complete with an air-lock entrance and air filtration system, making people go see a doctor and be disinfected before coming over, and a bunch of other crazy things. This lady obviously did her research before she decided to raise her daughter like this. Maddy goes into her mom's office and finds her medical records. She had been tested for SCID by multiple doctors and they had all said that she didn't have it, yet her mother decided they were wrong. She didn't want to lose her daughter too, and that is what she told Maddy when Maddy confronted her about the lies.
At the end of the book, Maddy finds Olly in a book shop in the town where he now lives and we're kind of left with a cliffhanger.
I really enjoyed this book, and the plot twist at the end really brought the whole book together. I think Maddy's mom is insane for having done that to her, and I hope that there aren't parents who would do that to their child, but as psychology student, I know that there are but also that those parents should have gotten help to cope and that Maddy's mother needed a lot of help. This book is great for a quick, fun read, but it also has some meaning behind it as well.
I'd love to hear what you thought of the book, tell me in the comments below!
Source
Callao Designs and Barb Ballard © Copyright 2013. (n.d.). The SCID Homepage. Retrieved March 29, 2017, from http://www.scid.net/
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