Book Talk: Everything Leads to You

Everything Leads to You held immediate appeal for me. As a lover of stories and movies and pretty things, I wanted to be a part of Emi Price's world. I'm not an artist, but I have some incredibly talented friends, and reading this reminded me of those moments when I've talked to them or seen them working on a project and wished I could be inside their brains and hearts and hands and do the things they do.

As a result, I didn't identify with Emi as much as I did with her best friend, Charlotte - someone in an organizational rather than a creative capacity, working on the periphery of things rather than in the center of them, and (as far as I could tell) okay with that.

That being said, I definitely enjoyed getting a glimpse behind the curtain, which is part of why this book held so much allure for me: Everything Leads to You is a contemporary young adult novel with a premise that didn't feel familiar.

As a main character, Emi felt grounded. She lives in Los Angeles and works in the entertainment industry without playing into the stereotype that all people who live in LA are vapid and narcissistic. She makes mistakes and isn't always able to make them right, and she questions herself and others, and although she has more responsibilities and opportunities than most, ultimately she's just a teenage girl trying to figure out life, and that comes across authentically.

Without a doubt, my favorite thing about Emi is that she is unapologetic. She doesn't apologize for getting emotional or throwing herself headfirst into something, whether it be her projects or her relationships with other people. She is an LGBTQ character, but this never becomes her defining characteristic. And then there's this: she is unapologetically pursuing what some would consider to be an unconventional or impractical career path (as a production designer). Emi never apologizes for who she is, and that's something I don't see represented in young adult literature (or in life) as much as I'd like. It's refreshing, and it's the reason why I'll be recommending this book.

P. S. Sending major rainbows and puppies and bowls of ice cream to Bloglovin', without whom this blog post might never have existed - it was accidentally deleted prior to caching, and I thought it would be lost forever, but Bloglovin' saved my life (a mild exaggeration) and saved me from having to try to recreate this post from memory. The feeling of relief was akin to the one I get when people cancel plans. Seriously.