First love and self discovery on SCID row.

Genre : Young Adult
Pages : 320
Format : Paperback
First published : 2017
Original Language: English
Start date: 8th Feb 2025
End date: 14th Feb 2025

The plot: Maddie suffers from SCID (severe combined autoimmune deficiency). That means she is allergic to everything – anything, include things most of us take for granted, could cause an allergic reaction and kill her. She has been confined indoors since she was a baby, living in total isolation – no visitors, other than her mother and her carer, can enter the property. School takes place online. Reading is her safe space, and her best friend is her mother. Maddie’s father and brother are dead, killed in a car accident when she was a baby. Her mother is a doctor.
A new family moves in next door. Maddie quickly befriends their son, Olly, and they begin exchanging emails and communicating through windows, pantomiming conversations by writing on the windows. It soon becomes clear that Olly’s home life is far from a happy one – his father is a violent drunk and his mother is a lonely, terrified woman. Eventually, Maddie and Olly begin meeting in person, with Maddie’s carer tentatively allowing Olly to enter the bubble to visit Maddie at home. Friendship turns to romance, as Maddie begins to yearn for the life she has never lived, and experiences she has never had.

How far will she go to change her life? What risks will she take to be with Olly and live the life she has never been able to?

What did I think of this book?
Everything Everything was ok. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t spectacular. It was a diversion for me from my own health issues, and in its own way it made me grateful for the gift of good health, and the ability to engage with others for support.

Young Adult novels tend to go either way for me. This one stayed on the right side of enjoyable – just. The unexpected twist at the end swayed things and kept this novel from being too sentimental.

What did I find most interesting?
The characters are well drawn and surprisingly relatable, and I felt their emotions. The novel gives us an unexpected villain in the shape of Maddie’s mother, but I found myself feeling sympathy for her, rather than anger or dislike. Maddie’s mother is someone who has been through something that no one would ever wish to experience, and her reaction to her grief is understandable, if not natural. Despite having the potential to be quite bleak, Everything Everything has the right blend of humor and pathos to keep us interested, combined with the highs and lows of first love.

We are left with a degree of certainty at the end, but this is limited – I was left with the feeling that there was more story to tell. This seems to be a deliberate choice by the author, as it mirrors the uncertainty faced by Maddie as one part of her life concludes and she begins a new chapter.

What will I take away from this book?
There is so much in life that we take for granted. The opportunity to leave our homes, interact with others, to love and learn on our own terms, even to breathe the air, or enjoy a meal, without fear that it will poison us. Everything Everything forced me to reflect on what would life be like if all those things were taken from us. How might we feel if we had never experienced them in the first place? Would we force a change in circumstances, as Maddie does in the novel, or would we simply accept our fate?
Everything Everything also shows us that nothing in life is fixed – change can happen unexpectedly. Love can be found in the most unlikely of places, or in the most difficult of circumstances. Love isn’t always based on physical connection ; it can blossom through words, a connection that is emotional, intellectual, or spiritual, and can lead us to unexpected places. Maddie and Oli are two lost souls who find comfort and some measure of normality in each other, despite their lives being anything but normal. Their love may or may not last, but the effect they have on each other’s lives will live on.