Title: I'll Give You the Sun
Author: Jandy Nelson
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult
Pages: 379
Published: September 16th, 2014
Summary: Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them.
But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life.
The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world. - Goodreads
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Review: (Spoiler-free)
Oh my lord.
When I was twelve years old, I read Jandy Nelson's debute book,
The Sky is Everywhere and I loved it so much. That was a long time ago now, and this book,
I'll Give You the Sun, is the first book she has released since then, and ever since it came out I have wanted to read it. I heard great things about it, and though at first I thought the storyline sounded a bit vague, I still wanted to read it because I remembered how much I loved her first book.
I loved this one more. Nelson is such an incredibly talented writer. I don't know how she does it but she has a way with words that just makes me feel so much. It is beautiful and heartbreaking both at the same time, the entire book is so colorful and well-planned that it takes my breath away.
“Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.”
The characters are amazing - I love them. Not as part of a story, the way we love characters when we read. I love them as humans, I love the way their minds work and even their flaws. They feel so real and raw and so exposed on the paper that I could not stop reading about them and hope that things would work out. Often when a story switches between two different PoV's, I favor one of them, but this time I loved both just as much. When one PoV ended, I wanted to say "Stop, wait, not yet!" but the other story caught me right away and I soon forgot about the other one.
I think Nelson is a genius when it comes to giving that little extra to a story. Small details that make the characters and their lives special, excentric, different - I felt this with both of her books. The way Noah describes how he feels by painting in his mind, the way Jude hangs on to every word of their grandma's superstitious bible, it so well describes who they are without actually saying it out loud.
Also, it jumpes back and forth in time, since Jude tells the story when they're 16 and Noah when they're 13. You find out things in a jumpy manner, but not the messy kind but the one that leaves you hanging for more. In the end it's all tied together so well and I just love the entire concept.
This review has been all praise, I know, but it was a long time ago that I fell this hard for a book. I thought it was amazing, it made me cry and it was seriously impossible for me to put down. I read it in one sitting, and I wish it had been longer. I also hope it doesn't take another five years for her next book to be released, but I will gladly wait that long if it is this good.
Now go read it!
Have you read this book? Did you like it as much as I did?
