Can someone be allergic to the world? You can find the possibility of that within the pages of Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon.
If you were captivated by the narrative in this beautiful book, then keep reading as we examine other books like Everything Everything.
Released in 2015, Everything Everything follows Maddy, a teenage girl who is said to have an immunodeficiency disease that is as rare as it is famous. The disease means she can’t leave the confines of her home.
Contact with the outside world would put her at risk of an allergic reaction or fatal infection. Hence, for fifteen years, she has lived in a hermetically sealed environment within her house, and the only people she ever sees are her mom (who is a doctor) and her nurse.
However, things take a new turn when a new family moves in next door. Maddy begins to pantomime conversations with a member of the new family-(Olly) through the safety of her window. Her communication with Olly makes her question her small world and what she wants.
As the book progresses and events unfold, Maddy begins to yearn for more than what her little world has to offer. Further progression into the book reveals Maddy’s journey into romance and a discovery that will shake her to her core.
The book focuses on themes of love, truth, lies, family, risk, bravery, and personal freedom. The book also focuses on teenagers’ challenges while growing up in unique situations. It also examines how the past can affect the future and how far someone is willing to go for the ones they love.
Read on as we examine other books like Everything Everything.
Books Like Everything Everything
1. Five Feet Apart
By Rachael Lippincott
They see each other. They are in the same space but can’t touch. Five Feet Apart is a tale of two teenagers, Stella and Will, who both suffer from the same disease: cystic fibrosis. This medical condition means they must remain five feet apart or risk contaminating each other.
Stella is the queen of control. Even though her lungs are out of control, she tries to be in control of the circumstances she can take charge of and aims to get a lung transplant.
On the other hand, all Will wants is to get out of the hospital and see the world. Our protagonists both have different priorities but eventually reach a compromise.
Five Feet Apart is also a story of forbidden romance like Everything Everything. It tells how our protagonist finds ways to connect despite the limitations of their medical condition.
Since staying alive and staying apart feels like torture, when these teenagers fall in love, they are forced to push the boundaries of medical professionals. They do this in an attempt to be together, all while knowing they’re putting each other’s health at risk.
It is a tale of the power of love and the heights one can go for love, just as Madeline in Everything Everything risks her health to be with Olly.
Both books explore themes of love, sacrifice, and overcoming obstacles. Five Feet Apart was first published in November 2018 and adapted into a film in 2019, just like Everything Everything.
2. If I Stay
By Gayle Forman
If I Stay is a story about choices in life-threatening situations, just like Everything Everything. The book is told over a period of 24 hours through a series of flashbacks where 17-year-old Mia- the protagonist, takes an objective look at her life.
The book has themes of young love, family, and death. It revolves around Mia, who is involved in a car crash with her family. Here, her family died while she was left somewhere in between.
While having an out-of-body experience, Mia embarks on a psychological and emotional journey of the events in her life. This journey will pave the way for the subsequent twists and turns in the book.
Just like Everything Everything, If I Stay also explores the relationships between the main characters and their parents, as well as the impact of these relationships on their lives.
More so, in If I Stay, Mia is in a coma after a car accident, which confines her. While in Everything Everything, Maddy has a rare disease that confines her to her home.
Made into a popular film adaptation like Everything Everything, the book has similar popularity and appeal to a wide audience.
Both books also incorporate elements of self-discovery and personal growth. The protagonists in both stories are forced to confront their fears, desires, and aspirations, leading to a deeper understanding of themselves and their place in the world.
3. Eleanor and Park
By Rainbow Rowell
One of the books like Everything Everything is Eleanor and Park. Like Nicola Yoon’s book, Eleanor and Park is a young adult novel exploring love, identity, and self-discovery themes.
The names of the protagonists form the title of this book. It follows the story of Eleanor and Park as they troll the journey of self-discovery and growth.
The main characters in this interesting book have their peculiar characters and are completely different from each other. But a ride on the school bus brings them together and changes the course of their relationship and how the book unfolds. Like Maddy, who has a rare disease that confines her to her home, Eleanor is a socially awkward girl from a troubled family.
The book, just like Everything Everything, also features an unconventional love between two star-crossed teenagers from different backgrounds who face societal pressures that make their relationship difficult.
Despite the circumstances around them, like with Olly and Maddy, these characters are smart enough to know the limitations and acknowledge that, like Romeo and Juliet, their first love may not last. But they are also brave enough to take risks for love.
The complexities of family relationships are another similarity between these books. Eleanor and Park come from dysfunctional families, and their home lives greatly impact their experiences, choices, and the course of the story. In Everything Everything, Maddy’s relationship with her overprotective mother is also a noteworthy aspect of the story.
4. Close Enough to Touch
By Colleen Oakley
Close Enough to Touch follows the story of a young woman, Jubilee Jenkins, who has a rare and debilitating medical condition like our young heroin in Everything Everything. As the title suggests, Jubilee gets close to people but never close enough to touch.
Her medical condition compels her to become a hermit after a near-death experience in her high school. She has a rare allergy to human touch, and any skin-to-skin contact could kill her.
With the loss of her mom, Jubilee is forced to face the world and the people in it that she is hiding from to make ends meet. Fortified with gloves, long sleeves, and her trusty bicycle, Jubilee takes the risk and ventures out the front door.
Her search for a job leads her down the path that eventually changes the narrative of her life. As the story evolves, we discover that love has no boundaries.
5. Me Before You
By Jojo Moyes
Just as the book title suggests, Me Before You tells the tale of a strong desire to put the happiness of the one you love above yours, the book follows Louisa – the female protagonist who takes a job as a caregiver of Will, a quadriplegic man.
Like Maddy, Will feels trapped because of his medical condition and mourns his life before the accident. This made him moody and bossy, which chased many caretakers hired to care for him.
Louisa refuses to give up and works consciously towards showing him that life is still worth living despite his condition. Here, a bitter-sweet romance develops between them that changes the course of the book.
Me Before You was released in 2016 and has been adapted into a successful film like Everything Everything. Like Everything Everything, the characters in Me Before You also experience transformative relationships. This challenges their perspectives on life and pushes them to step out of their comfort zones.
With themes of love, friendship, and personal growth, both books address living life to the fullest, seizing the moment, and making the most of your circumstances.
6. The Fault in Our Stars
By John Green
Also, among books like Everything Everything is The Fault in Our Star. Shakespeare’s play inspired this book title, Julius Caesar Act 1 Scene 2. It is a story about love through adversity. It describes the pain and hardship undergone while two teens diagnosed with cancer fall deeply in love.
This book tells the tale of Hazel, who has terminal cancer, as her life is being prolonged with the help of medical treatment.
She is encouraged to join a weekly cancer support group, and here she meets Augustus, who also has cancer. Their first meeting was tense, but they became friends and fell in love despite that.
Written with a heart-warming emotion coated with humor, the book progresses further with twists that explore the tragic business of being alive and in love.
It examines the idea of living life to the fullest despite the limitations imposed by illness. Like Everything Everything, the characters in The Fault in our Stars strive to find joy and meaning in their lives, even in the face of their health challenges.
7. Side Effects May Vary
By Julie Murphy
Side Effects May Vary follows the story of Alice- a teenage girl diagnosed with Leukemia. Thinking that she had a short time on earth, Alice decided to live the rest of her days to the fullest and take revenge on those perceived to have wronged her.
Like Everything Everything, Side Effects May Vary also explores the theme of illness and its impact on the protagonists’ lives. Both books explore how the protagonists are forced to confront their mortality at a young age and make difficult decisions about living their lives.
Just like Maddy in Everything Everything, who later discovers that she has her life ahead of her. Alice in Side Effects May Vary also discovers that she will live and that her future has been completely changed.
8. All the Bright Places
By Jennifer Niven
One of the books like Everything Everything is All the Bright Places. This book explores the idea of romance and love through chance and fate. The book follows the story of Violet and Theodore.
Violet is a teenager who lives for the future and is in a haste to move away from her small town after graduation. At the same time, Theodore is another teenager fascinated by death and constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself.
When the duo meets on the ledge of the bell tower at school while planning to jump off the ledge to escape their reality, an unlikely friendship develops.
They both save themselves for that day while a budding relationship creeps up.
The relationship that develops between them metamorphosed into a desire to heal. But while Violet comes to terms with what she can’t control and finally starts living in the moment, Finch’s moments are becoming limited as he struggles with deteriorating mental health.
9. A Quiet Kind of Thunder
By Sara Barnard
A Quiet Kind of Thunder is also among books like Everything Everything. Both books explore themes of isolation and loneliness. They also address the challenges of living with a disability or illness.
We see Steffi’s selective mutism and Madeline’s immune disorder as central to the plot in these books, which shapes the experiences and interactions of our protagonist with others.
The book follows the story of Steffi, who feels isolated due to her selective mutism, just like Madeline in Everything Everything, who is isolated due to her severe immune disorder.
This book shows love transcending communication barriers when our protagonist, Steffi, meets Rhys, a deaf boy who communicates via sign language. As the book goes deeper, we see our protagonist overcoming her limitations through the strength of connection and the courage to speak up.
We can also see unconventional forms of communication displayed in this book, just like in Everything Everything. The significance of stepping out of one’s comfort zone and taking risks is also highlighted in both novels.
10. The Sun Is Also a Star
By Nicola Yoon
Both novels explore themes of identity, the complexities of relationships, and love. Also written by Nicola Yoon, they both talk about the impact of choices on our lives.
Just like Everything Everything, The Sun is Also a Star has characters from diverse cultural backgrounds. It follows Natasha, a practical and scientific-minded girl, and Daniel, a poetic and romantic boy who believes in fate.
Natasha faces the shocking reality that her family is about to be deported to Jamaica. At the same time, Daniel’s Korean immigrant parents pushed him to attend an Ivy League University to study a course of their choosing.
The novel follows their chance encounter and the events that unfold over a single day. The book delves into their struggles, cultural backgrounds, and how they try to figure out the next steps in their complicated lives. In over twelve hours, we can see the power of love and connection being displayed in the book.
Even though both books combine elements of science and technology in their narratives, we can also see the power of fate and the idea that everything happens for a reason being explored in these books.
Like Everything Everything, The Sun Is Also a Star received positive reviews from readers and has been adapted into a movie.
11. We Were Liars
By E. Lockhart
Also among the books like Everything Everything is We Were Liars. The book follows Cadence, the protagonist, as she attempts to remember what happened during the summer when she was 15. Both books explore themes of self-discovery and personal growth, mystery, suspense, love, relationships, lies, and truth.
As the book progresses, Cadence begins to piece together the fragments of her memories. The book also takes an unexpected twist that challenges the reader’s perception of the story and leaves the reader wondering what is next.
Like in Everything Everything, the protagonist in We Were Liars is also isolated from the outside world. Here, Cadence spends her summers on her family’s private island, while Madeline is confined to her house due to a rare illness.
We see the unveiling of shocking truths in both books. In We Were Liars, the truth about Cadence’s past is revealed just like in Everything Everything, where the truth about Madeline’s illness is revealed. More so, the protagonists in both books are strong. They defy societal expectations as they strive to live on their own terms.
