Spoiler Alert

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve seen the 2001 release Bubble Boy with Jake Gyllenhaal, you pretty much already know how this book ends. 

 

 

 

Okay, but seriously…

Everything, Everything is this story about a girl, Madeline, who appears to have SCID (Severe combined immunodeficiency), meaning she can’t leave the house and live a “normal life” and she is content with this…. That is until Olly moves in next door and then her world is flipped inside-out, upside-down.

 

Maddy makes friends with her new neighbor, Olly, against her mothers wishes. This is the first person her age that she has had physical contact with. They develop feeling for one another. All of this is happening behind her mothers back, by the way.

Olly lives with an abusive dad… Maddy see’s his father hit him, which causes her to rush out of her house, without thinking of the consequences… after all, love makes you do crazy things.

Once she gets a taste for life outside her sterile home, she can’t go back to the way things were. She applies for a credit card and runs away to Hawaii, convincing Olly with lies so he will take her there.

She eventually gets sick in Hawaii and ends up in the hospital. Her mom brings her home, nurses her back to health, and now Maddy wants nothing to do with Olly. Convinced that since she’s had a taste of freedom, of life, she cannot go back to the way things were before.

After a couple of months, Maddy receives an email from a doctor that was present in Hawaii. This email states she is NOT sick.

It eventually comes out that Maddy’s mom never recovered from her husband and son’s deaths. In her mind this was the only way to guarantee Madeline’s survival, especially because she was so sick as a baby.

I was not thrilled with the way the book ended. I knew it was coming, still wasn’t ready for it. At least in Bubble Boy we know he gets the girl.

However, all of that being said… I rated the book three stars. All the feels.