Review : Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour

Posted by Kay on July 18, 2014 2:13 am in 4.5 stars reads | 7 comments

Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
Pages : 307
Genre : YA, contemporary fiction
Stand alone
My Rating : 4.5/5

About the Book  :

My Thoughts :

The best way to explain how I felt about this book is to borrow John Green’s words from The Fault in Our Stars : 

“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

And that is truly it. As I first started reading the book, I wasn’t convinced. I had read Nina LaCour’s Hold Still recently (review coming soon!) so I knew her gorgeous writing could get to me; but even though we get into the story right from the start, I didn’t feel completely pulled in. The mystery started to unfold, we met new characters, things happened; and before I knew it, I couldn’t let go of the book. Even when I wasn’t holding it, my thoughts were between its pages.

Though it is the thread that carries the story, the mystery of the letter isn’t really what Everything Leads to You is about. Instead, it is a coming-of-age story about love and friendship and passion. It’s not about twists and “ohmigod” moments either; in fact, I think some readers might find it a bit uneventful. But to me, this book felt both like life (for its realistic point of view) and a movie (for the care the author put in the details).

I honestly didn’t think I could care this much about what a set designer does on a work day. I mean, I was intrigued, sure; but Nina Lacour put so much love and passion into Emi’s work that I, too, found myself fascinated by couches and plants and wall colors. While reading I would constantly look around our home, wondering what our walls told about ourselves (probably that we’re a bit lazy on painting the corners!), burning with the desire to decorate some empty corners.

But then there was the romance, which was sudden and slow at the same time, absolutely perfect in its little moments. And though there was lust, I didn’t feel this was the hormonal love-at-first-sight we often see in books; the way Emi cared for Ava, and waited for her, it felt like love. Real and beautiful love.

It was also great to have two girls falling in love, without the story being about homosexual issues of coming-out and acceptation. Even though these are extremely important issues, I think it is also equally important to showcase love in its simpler form; there’s a certain hope to it, I felt. The romance was so well written and so real that it didn’t matter, to me, that this was a girl-girl story; it was as swoon-worthy as if it had been a boy-girl story. And that’s how it should be, I believe.

And I’ve gone long enough and I still haven’t mentioned everything I loved about it : Emi’s family, her amazing friendship with her best friend, the complexity and heartbreak of Ava’s story, the raw emotion I felt through the novel, the whole movie-making… I simply connected with it all.

It’s easy to say that Everything Leads to You was a moment of book-magic for me; and I really really really hope it can be for many more readers!