Refreshing and deep. Lovely writing. Excellent characterization. Excellent pick for teen readers. Younger teens may need a content warning re:sexual assault scene.

This book was hard to read due to formatting. In some sections, you had paragraphs and in others, you had poetry driven lines. I wish that the author would have gone deeper into the connection between Kendra and the main character. The back and forth between the past and present also prevented a problem due to formatting. I think once corrected, it has the potential to be a good read.

This has a lot of promise, but I'm opting to put it down for now @ 30%
The writing/verse isn't doing it for me right now; I may pick it up again in the future when I'm feeling up for a story in verse! I was having a hard time investing into the story and not hooked on the writing.

Ada is going to be with me for a very long time. Here is a girl who is a good student, an obedient daughter, a quiet observer of others...who is also failing her accounting class, who wants to change her major in college, who dances with such passion that you can't look away. Just like the title, Every Body Looking, that can be read in two ways, you can "read" Ada two ways as well as she grows into the strong person she needs to be. Gorgeous, gorgeous writing. I read every page three times to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Thank you so much Penguin and Fae Crate for this!!

I really enjoy books written in verse and when I heard this book was exactly that I was so excited. This is told through the eyes of Ada, a first generation Nigerian American girl who is just graduating from High School. We learn through her that the expectations of her family, namely her father are set very high and she carries that with her into her first year at an Historically Black College.

We see a great deal of Ada's family life and her relationships in college. Ada has a very strong voice and her various struggles with home and school are very relatable.

What I struggled with is the pacing, it felt very off kilter in some ares which pulled me from the flow of the story. That could have been because of the formatting of the eARC as well. The ending felt very abrupt, I was expecting two or three more verses when the book just ends.

On a whole, I really enjoyed the experience of reading this. Candice Iloh is someone that I will totally look for more books by.

I'm always looking for new verse novels and this one was good.

Things I liked: Ada's journey was very relatable for high school students. The occasional word definitions - reminiscent of David Levithan's Lover's Dictionary.

Things I didn't like: so much happened and not all was resolved (though, you know, that's real life)

*copy from Netgalley*

In general, I do not like books written in verse as it forces an author to force a story to adhere to a format that might benefit from a more traditional writing structure and that's what I feel about Every Body Looking. There was so many good themes and plot lines in Every Body Looking that I wish could have been expanded upon. Instead of written in verse, I could imagine this book might have worked better if it were written as a diary. However, I was able to read the book in less than four hours and I was able to feel the struggle of the main character, Ada, in my heart. Candice Iloh did a great job of describing the difficulty of living on your own and discovering one's self during the first year of college in such a realistic way. It was especially great that it took place in a HBCU (Historically Black College and University) setting. I would like to see more diverse Black stories like this in the Young Adult genre. I would love to see another book written by Candice Iloh in this world/campus.

A novel in verse that is semi-autobiographical about a first generation Nigerian immigrant, Ada, finding what she loves independent of her family's/society's expectations of her. Body is separate in the title because Iloh writes with so much thoughtfulness and imagery about Black female bodies and bodily autonomy and who is allowed to/stripped of that autonomy and why. Ada has a fractured relationship with her mostly absent and abusive mother, and though she loves her very religious Nigerian father, she struggles with his expectations for her future that don't match her own desires for herself. So much is good here, but the story jumps around in time, which was sometimes confusing, and not all of the flashbacks served the story, as some led to unfinished narrative threads. The book also stops abruptly, which was a bit jarring. I want to see her verse on the page, because the e-galley had editor notes and I'm hoping some of the time-hopping confusion will be mitigated with a word flow edit on the pages of the book. I can already think of students that I will recommend this to, and will definitely add it into my book-talk rotation.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Every Body Looking is a harsh, honest and emotional debut from Candice Iloh. Outlining college year one, the first chance of independence, for Ada - finding her identity and embracing her love of dance.

It took me a little while to get used to the layout and pacing of this book, but once I adjusted I did enjoy the almost diary-style of the book.

Reading this It felt like it needed a little bit of a polish and perhaps some fleshing out of the abrupt-feeling end, but overall this is a strong and interesting debut.

Nigerian-American Ada has just graduated from high school in Chicago. Through stark free verse, she shares her transition to an HBCU in Washington, DC. Flashbacks to events in 1st, 2nd, and 6th grades give readers a better understanding of the things Ada has carried from her childhood. Addressing family expectations, friendship, and sexuality, Iloh packs a punch in her YA debut.

The electronic arc (thanks Dutton and aNetGalley!) is unformatted, so I don’t know what the final layout will look like, but given the fact that the arc is about 100 full pages and the finished book will be about 400, we can expect plenty of white space that underscores the spareness of Ada’s voice.

This is a novel in verse about our protagonist, Ada, graduating from high school, where she never fit in, and finding her place in the world as she enters college and lives away from her family for the first time. The flashbacks help provide context for experiences Ada has in the present moment.

Ada's voice kept me reading -- I read the entire book in one afternoon! I did not want the book to end and was surprised when there were no more pages to read. I would have liked a little more at the end, as it seemed a bit abrupt, but overall, I really enjoyed Every Body Looking.

I have added this book to my classroom library wishlist and will definitely recommend this book to my students, especially those who enjoyed novels like The Poet X.

Gorgeous. I will definitely be getting a print copy of this book and sharing it widely. A great book about that first year of college and finding yourself. Absolutely beautiful.