** spoiler alert ** 
 "Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love." 
 Everything, Everything is about 18-year-old Madeline, who has a rare disease that means she has been unable to leave her home for most of her life, lest she become seriously ill. Maddy lives with just her mother but also spends a lot of time with her nurse, Carla and never, ever goes outside. 
 Fairly early on in the book, we are introduced to a major plot device in the form of love interest, boy-next-door, Oliver Black. Olly and his family move in to the house next door to Maddy's and, as Maddy watches them, taking note of their routines, she develops a fondness for him. They begin to talk online and even convince Carla to let Olly visit until, eventually, Maddy risks her health and even her life to leave the safety of her home and run away with him. The Maddy-Olly romance clearly seems unoriginal and dull to many readers and I suppose, if you read it that way, it kind of is. But, if you think about it, Olly isn't really that important. Maddy has spent her whole life trapped behind a door. There must have always been a part of her that wanted out, that wanted to live life and see the world and just be a normal person. She didn't run away to be with Olly, she ran away because she wanted to live - she wanted to see the sea and eat prawns and fall in love. Olly was just a glimpse of this life - a little crush that opened her up to the possibility of living, of just being a normal 18-year-old girl. He wasn't a hunky boy she fell hopelessly in love with and risked her life for - he was just that little glimpse of hope she needed to make her leap of faith - to live the life she truly wanted, even if only for a few days. 
 The plot itself did not seem annoying or unoriginal but I did personally find to be quite predictable. Nothing happened that surprised me, but it was nonetheless enjoyable, just not overly engaging. It was nice to read but I wasn't constantly desperate to find out what happened next. 
 On the surface, Maddy does seem a bit perfect. She's rather immature for her age but that's to be expected given the sheltered life she's led and, to be honest, if she'd been particularly mature, I would have found her unrealistic in that respect. In some ways, though, I did find her to be overly nice. I didn't think she was selfish at all, or at least not more than you'd expect of someone in her situation. Can she really be faulted for wanting a normal life? For not wanting to spend half her life playing games and watching films with her mother. She's 18, she wants to live! Is that so terrible? I find the way she accepts her lot in life and is determined to be happy despite it rather admirable. I did, however, find some of her lack of strong emotion a bit odd and unrealistic. She has no memory of ever having been outside before and yet, when she does go ahead, she's hardly scared at all. She's more frightened of Olly seeing her in just a swimsuit than she is of this whole crazy, big world she's come out in to. I also thought there was in insufficient amount of emotion when she discovered she wasn't really sick. Surely there would have been a little more anger at her mother? A little more sadness that she'd missed out on so much? It doesn't seem to take her long at all to forgive and forget and move on with her life so she seemed rather overly perfect in that respect. 
 Olly does seem, a lot of the time, to be a bit perfect as well, a bit of a manic pixie dream boy, if you will. I do think we can forgive this a little, however, as we do see him through Maddy's eyes and she is sufficiently besotted to prevent her noticing his faults. If you try to get past this and see him as he is, I think that Nicola Yoon has actually done a pretty good job of writing a normal teenaged boy. Sure, the whole Parkour thing is a bit much but, really, why not? Yoon gives a good impression that he isn't perfect - he doesn't know how to deal with his father, he goes to visit Maddy because he wants to see her, even though he knows there's a risk, he believes her when she lies to him because he wants to, even though she's difficult to believe. He's by no means perfect - in reality, he's just a scared 17-year-old boy who's pretending to be brave. 
 The character of the mother, at first, is just that - a caring but strict maternal figure who just wants to keep her daughter as safe and happy as she can. I liked the twist for what it did for Maddy's mum - it took a good, fairly standard authority figure and gave her vulnerability, showed the child in the mother and I thought that was quite wonderful. It was the only part of the book that inspired emotion in me, as the reader. I never really felt strongly for Maddy but I did for her mother at that moment. I saw the fear her eyes, the hopelessness, the loss of control. I thought that was very well done. 
 The other major character is Carla, Maddy's nurse. She combines the roles of best friend and mentor in Maddy's life and she does it very well. She's certainly a likeable character but, with all she must do, I felt like she was the least real character in the book. She was lacking in faults - she cared for Maddy, she cared for her daughter, she wanted to help Maddy see Olly and be happy but also wanted to help keep Maddy safe. When she was fired, she wasn't angry, she was just upset that Maddy wouldn't have her there. I feel like she was a necessary character in the book, to lead Maddy to do what she does and to support her but there wasn't as much depth to her as a character as there could have been. 
 I wasn't keen on the little pictures throughout the book. I mean, I liked them, but I didn't think they worked for the context, I thought they were unnecessary and perhaps weren't right for the subject matter or the audience that the book itself would appeal to. I did think the way the book itself was written was fairly good. It did nothing spectacular but it didn't confuse or annoy me at any point, it generally did the job of conveying the story pretty well. 
 I wasn't, however, very emotionally moved by the book. I felt like it had the potential to do so much, to make me feel so much but I wasn't as attached to the characters as I could have been and there was nothing to inhibit a strong emotional reaction in me. As I said above, the mother's reaction to finding out she'd been wrong was the emotional part of the book in my opinion. It's not that it did that badly, I just felt there was potential for an awful lot more and the lack of emotion was a little disappointing. 
 Despite this, the book has some nice overriding themes - it attempts to express how good life can be, and how we should enjoy it, make the most of it and take pleasure in the little things - the things Maddy takes pleasure in because she's never experienced them before. Her dream to go to Hawaii may seem small and almost silly to some people, like that's nothing new or special and plenty of people want to go to Hawaii but they don't risk their lives for it but I think the whole point is that her dream is nothing extraordinary and yet it means the world to her because it's something she never imagined she could ever have, something so simple that she's willing to risk her life for. 
 Overall, although I don't think this book did anything earth-shattering and I don't think it lived up to its potential, it was an enjoyable read (and it has a very pretty cover ).