Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything, Everything, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age
Trust and Lies
Family, Abuse, and Bravery
The Value of Experience
Summary
Analysis
Olly is ready when Maddy gets to her window. He writes “lab partner,” and Maddy mimes that she’s not jealous. Maddy tells the reader that sometimes, she reads her favorite books from back to front. When she does this, characters come back to life, lose their way, and lovers turn into strangers. She thinks that if her life were a book, it would read the same forward and backward—until Olly came on the scene. Now, Maddy thinks that her life doesn’t make sense. She’s not sure how to go back to the way things were, when her books were enough. Everything she knows came from books, but she also knows that kisses in books will never be the same as kissing Olly.
Seeing Olly with the other girl makes it abundantly clear to Maddy that if she’s not able to experience anything out in the real world, she’s not truly living—being shut up inside but being alive isn’t the same as experiencing all the world has to offer, both good and bad. This is why she mentions that her books are no longer good enough. Though she doesn’t discount that her books taught her a lot about the world, next to Olly, they don’t come close to making her feel real and alive.
Themes
