In early December, Sarah reviewed David Levithan’s Every Day.

At the time, Sarah said, “It’s ambitious storytelling; Levithan is balancing a lot of factors (many characters; a story about first love; a story about, well, a body snatcher who has no physical form) and the elements come together gracefully.”

She also pointed out some issues of pacing and lack of characterization in the laundry list of hosts A occupies.

In our local Mock Printz, this was was pretty thoroughly torn apart — the consensus was that it felt more like a book based in a message than is really ideal for an award-winner, and the message sometimes trumped development, making this fall right to the bottom of the pile.

Now that we’ve been thinking about it for a while and hopefully most folks have read the full Pyrite* shortlist, does Every Day still rate? Do you agree that message trumps tale, or does the original and thought-provoking premise make this into a serious finalist?

*The Pyrite Printz, or Pyrite, is the Someday My Printz Will Come mock Printz deliberation, and should not in any way be confused with YALSA’s Michael L. Printz Award, often referred to here as the RealPrintz or Printz. Our predictions, conversations, and speculation about potential RealPrintz contenders and winners reflect only our own best guesses and are not affiliated with YALSA or the RealPrintz committee. You probably figured that out on your own, but we like to make it clear!