I didn't know what I was expecting when I started to read Everything Leads to You. I am not normally one to read contemporaries and for the most part don't end up enjoying the ones that I do end up reading. One of the things that I think that I disliked about reading contemporaries was reading about people like me, I live a life like mine I don't need to read them. This was not the case with this book at all. It was atmospheric and drew me into the mystery from the first page. I ended up loving each and every character in this book. They weren't all black and white and that was okay with me. 
 But what it also did was make me think. It made me realize how important this book is for teenagers to read, those who identify as LGBTQ+ and those who do not. 
 Why do I say this? 
 There was not a single aspect of this book that dramatized the fact that the main character Emi was a lesbian. There was no big out sequences and there was no drama attached to the characters sexuality. There was just acceptance from her friends and family. I can only imagine how hard it is to deal with that sort of experience in your daily life and then having to read about the drama and stress in books how that can be exhausting. I think that this book can also help show those who are not a part of the community how there is nothing strange or different about these relationships. They still go through the same confusion, love, and sometimes heartbreak that we do. But with that being said, there are a few issues I had with the story. One small-ish one a bit more large. 
 The first issue being that it read a bit older than the main characters were portrayed. In situations when they talked about her graduating I had to remind myself that they were not talking about college but high school. They were able to go places and do things that I don't have the experience (or parental trust I guess) at their age to have been able to do. This aspect didn't make the book any less enjoyable, it just was an aspect that was at times difficult for me to process having no experience in that sort of trust. But this aspect also leads to a bit of a sticky situation when it comes to my second point. 
 (view spoiler)[Emi is never home and because of this we never get to understand her or her parents and this becomes a big problem on page 178 when the revelation that she is a quarter black came out. Who was she having this conversation with? Her love interest? No, a random POC that was brought over by someone else who exclaimed 'I would have never guessed you were black'. I'm sorry, but this seemed kind of a fucking lazy way of coming out with this information. This could have been done in so many more ways than having this information slammed into your face. Descriptions of her brother (who apparently looks more black then her with his curly hair, two shades darker skin, and brown eyes), a description of her mother the one other time she goes (and not just saying she's a professor of black and women studies. SAYY IT!!), or hell her being home and her family having a witty conversation about the topic? I mean this conversation was planned to happen, this information was going to be out there, but doing it in this way made it seem like it was being used as a 'wow' factor and it puts me off when people do it with a characters sexuality and it bugs me when they do it with race. (hide spoiler)] 
 I think that even with these faults this book has an important message when it comes to acceptance in love and yourself. There isn't going to be a book that doesn't have faults. Despite this glaringly large problem, I loved Nina's writing and I enjoyed the story. I didn't love it. But I can see why so many do.