ANOTHER DAY

Waking up in a new body each day ain’t easy—neither is trying to keep track of the person who does.

Readers first met A in Levithan’s ethereal 2013 novel, Every Day (2013). A is a being neither male nor female who wakes up inhabiting a different teenage body every morning. There’s no rhyme or reason for the bodies that A inhabits; they come in all sorts and sizes of teens—large, slight, Caucasian, Asian, athletic, popular, clinically depressed. All are of a similar age, and all tend to be within a certain geographical radius. Where the first novel was told from A’s perspective, this companion novel serves as the former’s mirror image, following the heroine of the first book, 16-year-old Rhiannon, whose boyfriend Justin is taken over by A in the first chapter—a meeting first recounted in the previous book through A’s eyes. The two forge an unlikely connection and, after A persuades Rhiannon of the truth, fall in love. What follows is their struggle to stay together despite A’s drifter status with no permanent body. Where the first novel carried some air of mystery and intrigue, this one focuses primarily on the relationship and the drama that results. Like the first effort, the theme and tone line up pretty much perfectly with Levithan’s dreamy, higher-than-the-stars characters and ideas. Still, nothing really new or earth shattering is revealed other than Levithan’s ability to tell the same story from a different perspective.

A fast-paced, absorbing companion.