Title: The Sky is Everywhere
Author: Jandy Nelson
Publisher: Walkers Books
Publication Year: 2013
Genre: YA | Romance
Rating: 3
“Doesn’t matter what anyone else would call it, Len,” he says. “This is our story to tell.”
What I would give to be able to remove a few parts of this story and tweak it ever so slightly to be able to make it better. The best thing about reading Jandy Nelson book sis that Nelso has a way with words that I’ve always admired. She writes and it’s raw feelings that get printed onto the page, I’m sure of it! Then every feeling that you read gets soaked up inside of you and you’re suddenly experiencing them yourself. Every quiver of excitement or drag of doubt. Every burst of love and even the harsh waves of inner turmoil. Nelson just has a way of inspiring emotions. It makes sense that her writing is so beautiful when you realise that Nelson is a published poet!
But once I got over Nelson’s beautiful beautiful writing and this gorgeous book (I’m not kidding, this book is seriously gorgeous! Before every chapter they have a lovely quote photograph and it just looks so good), I just couldn’t get into the story. One of the issues is that it has a lot of instalove. The moment that Lennie meets Joe she finds him hot and from there it’s just a straight leap to love. There’s no inbetween reall. But the one thing I couldn’t stand was that she didn’t just love Joe, she also had a thing with her sister’s boyfriend. That’s the thing irked me the most. Nelson tried to explain it but I just couldn’t see it as anything but wrong. It was so wrong. Especially as the novel developed and more things happened; I just couldn’t stand it. Perhaps it was okay at first but when her relationship with Joe began to develop I assumed it would stop. There were so many times when I was mentally-screaming “Lennie no!” only for things to get worse.
Despite that, there were moments of this book that had me laughing out loud. Gram was definitely one of the best characters. She brought so much comic relief to the story, sending me into the loudest laughs after everything had just been sad. Her family is just a ton of crazy weirdos and I loved everything single one of them. From her green-thumb Gram with aphrodisiac roses to her love drunk Uncle, who is believed to benefit from these magic roses (in the sense that he has had a lot of relationships!). This loveable family makes light of a terrible situation in their own way, fighting back against the sadness of losing someone close to them.
Then there’s the way death was handled. Those final chapters were so emotional! I swear it went from a regular story to just suddenly ripping at your heart-string and leaving you sobbing. It was terribly emotional and this is why it’s gotten as many stars as it did. 1 for the writing, 1 for the characters and 1 for the way that Nelson closed it all. It was so good.
I wasn’t a huge fan of this one but I know that a lot of people love it. I would definitely suggest giving it a go. I would love to hear what you all think of it~
to read a novel 