Everything, Everything — Nicola Yoon

Parents at times are so possessive about their children that they ruin them forever just so they remain with them. Everything, Everything is about a possessive mother and her daughter who is scattered when she gets to know the reality.

Mandeline loves to read books and marks them with her name. She lives with her mother and nurse, Carla. She has a rare disease, basically she is allergic to the world, no one knows what might trigger a reaction. She hasn’t left her home in 17 years. Right after her 18th birthday, new neighbors moved in and their son Olly catches her attention.

Olly and his sister came to Mandeline’s house with a cake but her mother refuses it as Madeline is not allowed to eat anything from outside. Secretly both Olly and Mandeline through their conversations on the window share email addresses for further talks and since then have been talking almost daily. One day Carla sneaks Olly inside the house on Mandeline’s request. Mandeline’s father and brother passed away in an accident. Whereas Olly’s father is a bad tempered drunk head, who is always shouting on his family.

The secret meetings began to happen more often and then Olly and Mandeline kissed as they couldn’t resist one another. Her mother got to know their secret and fired Carla for letting Olly in the house, whereas Mandeline had been grounded. All this confinement was not unbearable for Mandaline anymore so she decided to go to Hawaii with Olly on a vacation without informing her mother. She made all the arrangements and went there but had an attack and was rushed to the hospital. Her mother took her back home and converted her room into a hospital ward.

Olly and his family moved out. The doctor who checked Mandeline in Maui sends her an email informing her that she is not sick. Also that she should get a second or third opinion on her condition. That night Mandeline went to her mother’s study where she kept all documents but didn’t anything there. Then she went to her mother and asked her for details: whether she was ill or not. She finds the truth with Carla on their visit to another doctor. Her mother had been lying to her because she couldn’t afford to lose her, like her son and husband. Though Mandeline couldn’t forgive her mother for confining her all these years yet she understood her condition and traumas. Mandeline from that day onward went outside and even traveled to New York to meet Olly.