i'll give you the sun book review

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I'll give you the sun, common sense media reviewers.

Brother-sister twins trace their rift in riveting novel.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

Readers will learn about art, awakening teen sexua

No matter what the cost, believe in and be true to

A teen boy is bullied and is the victim of a poten

The novel involves the awakening of sexuality amon

There's a good deal of swearing and name-calling:

The high school teens drink beer and have a danger

Parents need to know that I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson ( The Sky Is Everywhere) is a brilliant, emotional, complex novel told in two voices, and it won the 2015 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults. In alternating chapters, often in a stream-of…

Educational Value

Readers will learn about art, awakening teen sexuality, anti-gay bullying, and how a tragedy and silence can cause a family to malfunction.

Positive Messages

No matter what the cost, believe in and be true to yourself.

Violence & Scariness

A teen boy is bullied and is the victim of a potentially dangerous drunken game. Another teen boy is harassed. A teen girl is raped.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The novel involves the awakening of sexuality among teens. There's intense romantic kissing between two boys and passionate kissing between a teen girl and a man. A teen boy suffers a devastating moment when he sees his mother throw her arms around her lover and kiss him.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

There's a good deal of swearing and name-calling: "f--k," "holy s--t," "Christ," "Jesus," "dork," "a--hat," "garbage-headed scum suckers," and the anti-gay slur "homos."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

The high school teens drink beer and have a dangerous, suicidal game with tequila. One character has used drugs and alcohol in the past. Cigarette butts provide evidence of smoking in one character's home.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson ( The Sky Is Everywhere ) is a brilliant, emotional, complex novel told in two voices, and it won the 2015 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults. In alternating chapters, often in a stream-of-consciousness style, we hear the voice of artistic Noah at 13 and that of his daredevil twin sister, Jude, at 16. The novel includes three love stories, awakening sexuality, devotion to art, a tragic death, betrayal, remorse, and forgiveness. There's some swearing and name calling (including "f--k," "holy s--t," and "homos"), teen drinking, bullying , and a rape. The two narratives collide in artful, touching, and revelatory ways.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

• Parents say (8)
• Kids say (33)

Based on 8 parent reviews

Not for young kids more for adults

What's the story.

Noah and Jude were inseparable twins in eighth grade, but three years later they're barely civil to each other. A tragedy has torn them apart. Both are budding artists, encouraged by their mother, who wants them both to go to the prestigious California School of the Arts. Only Jude is accepted, but she has trouble expressing herself artistically -- a problem she attributes to supernatural forces. Noah meets Brian, the new boy next door, and the attraction is intense and instant, but self-conscious Noah isn't sure if the feeling is truly reciprocated. Struggling with her art, Jude seeks guidance from a famed sculptor, whose James Dean-ish protégé, Oscar, can't keep his eyes or camera off her. But there are complications and family secrets that keep the twins from pursuing love or their friendship with each other. Through it all the ghost of a dead grandmother constantly visits Jude with advice. The twins' stories interweave as the drama unfolds and they go back and forth from age 13 to 16.

Is It Any Good?

I'LL GIVE YOU THE SUN is a compelling novel of twin siblings' fractured lives. There's heartbreak, wisdom, and joy -- and the writing often sings. Jude and Noah's passages of reflection are written in a stream-of-consciousness style that lets readers feel as if they know and understand them. Author Jandy Nelson is particularly drawn to characters with misfit, superstitious families, and fans of her debut novel, The Sky Is Everywhere , will be awestruck once again at her ability to capture the transformative power of grief, loss, and art (music for Lenny in Sky and the visual arts for Noah and Jude in Sun ). The author so vividly describes the artistic process that readers will feel the sand and stone in their hands as Jude sculpts or the charcoal as Noah sketches. Their art is what binds them but what also tears them apart.

As with Lenny and Joe in her first book, Nelson spends a good bit of the book tracing Noah and Jude's experiences with first love. Both of them have messy but rapturous love stories with guys who aren't perfect but might be exactly what the twins need -- if their own insecurities don't get in the way. Nelson's books aren't easy, lazy reads. They demand your attention with their lyrical writing and shifts in time. Some young readers may even be confused at times, as the sequences jump between the past and the present. Yet Jude and Noah are so alive, you really care about what happens to them.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about bullying and harassment in response to a person's sexual orientation or due to racial profiling or religious/ethnic prejudice. What can you do if you witness bullying at your school or in your community?

How have media attitudes and portrayals of what constitutes a family changed in recent years?

If you had an important secret, is there someone you could trust to tell it to?

Book Details

• Author : Jandy Nelson
• Genre : Contemporary Fiction
• Topics : Arts and Dance , Brothers and Sisters , Friendship , High School , Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Dial
• Publication date : September 16, 2014
• Number of pages : 371
• Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
• Award : ALA Best and Notable Books
• Last updated : April 16, 2019

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I'll Give You the Sun

Jandy nelson.

371 pages, Hardcover

First published September 16, 2014

About the author

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Community reviews.

“i love you,” i say to him, only it comes out, “hey.” “so damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “dude.”

”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."

“I love you,” I say to him, only it comes out, “Hey.” “So damn much,” he says back, only it comes out, “Dude.”

“People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.”

“What is bad for the heart is good for art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists.”

“I don’t want a split-apart,” I say. “I think I need my own soul.”

“We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.”

I know he's taking a hundred pictures, but I don't care anymore. A hot series of shivers is running through me as he continues clicking and saying: Yes, thank you, this is totally bloody it, perfect, yes, yes, sodding hell, God, look at you.  It's like we're kissing, way more than kissing. I can't imagine what my face must look like.  "You're her," he says finally, putting the cover over the lens. "I'm sure of it." "Who?" I ask. But he doesn't answer, just walks down the aisle toward me, a lazy, lanky walk that makes me think of summer. He's completely unwound now, went from high gear to no gear the moment he covered the lens. As he approaches, I see that he has one green eye and one brown eye, like he's two people in one, two very intense people in one.

“It’s time for second chances. It’s time to remake the world.”

“In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I’m not.”

“Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things.”

“I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence.”

- "I am my brother’s keeper" - “Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?” - “I love you," I say to him, but it only comes out, "Hey" "So damn much," he says back, it only comes out, "Dude” - “I'm falling forward with the force of two years of buried grief, the sorrow of ten thousand oceans finally breaking inside me- I let it. I let my heart break.”

“This is what I want: I want to grab my brother’s hand and run back through time, losing years like coats falling from our shoulders.”

“My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier. Because I imagined it.”

“For the record, I’m in the midst of a penis panic attack.”

“He floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.”

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Children’s Books

‘I’ll Give You the Sun,’ by Jandy Nelson

• Share full article

By Lauren Oliver

• Nov. 6, 2014

“I’ll Give You the Sun,” the second novel by the talented Jandy Nelson, author of “The Sky Is Everywhere,” is told from the alternating perspectives of teenage fraternal twins, a boy and girl named Noah and Jude, each of them narrating from a different side of the accident that forever changed their lives. On one level, the book is about duality: As Jude and Noah wrangle over who will go to a prestigious art school and vie for attention and approbation and even, for a short time, the affections of the same boy, each narrator struggles to become whole, to become something other than merely half of one. Although Nelson portrays the relationship between the twins, their oneness, as comforting, more often it is claustrophobic — perhaps contributing to the book’s tense, almost breathless feel. One of their favorite games is to divide up the world between them, choosing and bartering the sun or the trees or the oceans. There is the sense that the world is simply not big enough for both of them.

Later, as Jude and Noah swap identities, family roles, and even favorite parents, they come up against the failure of dichotomies, of moral absolutes. Good and bad, freak and normal — oppositional labels can’t describe or define their experiences, and the book makes us see the pluralities that are everywhere. “We grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way,” Jude reflects toward the novel’s end, “and some of us get to float around on one of them and call it home.” Nelson even leaves ambiguous the limits of reality itself, letting us wonder whether the ghost of the twins’ grandmother — a wonderful and whimsical character who occasionally drops in on Jude to deliver a perfectly timed witticism or bit of advice — is really a phantom or merely a projection of Jude’s desires. It’s an omission that in the hands of another writer might instead seem coy or even lazy, but in Nelson’s book seems a deliberate choice to celebrate the beauty of the mysterious. Above all, Jude and Noah learn that blame cannot be neatly assigned, and in this way “I’ll Give You the Sun” is a true coming-of-age tale: It shows its protagonists moving from a black-and-white version of the world to one of infinite, sometimes uncomfortable, variegations. Noah’s unfolding love story, and his thoughts and anxieties about being gay, are particularly touching. “Do guys normally stand so close to other guys?” he asks as he begins to fall in love. “I wish I’d paid more attention to these kinds of things before.” Jude’s romantic adventures are equally well drawn, and, perhaps most surprising, so are the novel’s grown-ups. These include the twins’ parents and the reclusive and mysterious sculptor Guillermo Garcia, who becomes Jude’s mentor, and who we ultimately discover has a more intimate connection with her past. If I have a single complaint, it’s about the speed with which these characters fire off revelations toward the end of the novel, frenetically uncovering deeper dimensions to their relationships and exposing new truths. But that’s a quibble, and a testament, really, to Nelson’s ability to build a suspenseful story not on plot devices but on the tightly coiled inner lives of her characters.

On a line-by-line level, Nelson is bold, even breathtaking. You get the sense her characters are bursting through the words, breaking free of normal metaphors and constructions, jubilantly trying to rise up from the prison of language — much in the way that Jude describes Guillermo’s work, or the way Michelangelo once described making a sculpture: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Nelson returns to this quotation several times, both commenting on and making manifest the struggle of the artist.

Art — its creation, its importance, its impact on identity and freedom — is perhaps the central theme of “I’ll Give You the Sun.” The book celebrates art’s capacity to heal, but it also shows us how we excavate meaning from the art we cherish, and how we find reflections of ourselves within it. I’ve always loved this line from Stendhal: “A novel is a mirror carried down a high road.” Done well, it shows us ourselves even as it moves us forward into new places and new understandings. “I’ll Give You the Sun” is a dazzling mirror, and many grateful teenagers are sure to find themselves reflected in and learning from its pages.

I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN

By Jandy Nelson

371 pp. Dial. $17.99. (Young adult; ages 12 and up)

Lauren Oliver’s first novel for adults, “Rooms,” has just been published.

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I'LL GIVE YOU THE SUN

by Jandy Nelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2014

Here’s a narrative experience readers won’t soon forget.

Twins Noah and Jude used to be NoahandJude—inseparable till betrayal and tragedy ripped them apart.

Nelson tells her tale of grief and healing in separate storylines, one that takes place before their art-historian mother’s fatal car accident and one that takes place after, allowing readers and twins to slowly understand all that’s happened. An immensely talented painter, Noah is 13 1/2 in his thread, when Brian moves in next door to their coastal Northern California home. His intense attraction to Brian is first love at its most consuming. Jude is 16 in hers, observing a “boy boycott” since their mother’s death two years earlier; she is also a sculpture student at the California School of the Arts—which, inexplicably, Noah did not get into. Haunted by both her mother and her grandmother, she turns to an eccentric sculptor for mentoring and meets his protégé, a dangerously charismatic British college student. The novel is structurally brilliant, moving back and forth across timelines to reveal each teen’s respective exhilaration and anguish but holding the ultimate revelations back until just the right time. Similarly, Nelson’s prose scintillates: Noah’s narration is dizzyingly visual, conjuring the surreal images that make up his “invisible museum”; Jude’s is visceral, conveying her emotions with startling physicality. So successful are these elements that the overdetermined, even trite conclusion will probably strike readers as a minor bump in the road.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014

ISBN: 978-0-8037-3496-8

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Dial Books

Review Posted Online: Aug. 11, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FAMILY | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

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More by Jandy Nelson

BOOK REVIEW

by Jandy Nelson

More About This Book

IF HE HAD BEEN WITH ME

by Laura Nowlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2013

There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.

The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.

Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.

Pub Date: April 1, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES

More by Laura Nowlin

by Laura Nowlin

SEEN & HEARD

IF ONLY I HAD TOLD HER

by Laura Nowlin ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A heavy read about the harsh realities of tragedy and their effects on those left behind.

In this companion novel to 2013’s If He Had Been With Me , three characters tell their sides of the story.

Finn’s narrative starts three days before his death. He explores the progress of his unrequited love for best friend Autumn up until the day he finally expresses his feelings. Finn’s story ends with his tragic death, which leaves his close friends devastated, unmoored, and uncertain how to go on. Jack’s section follows, offering a heartbreaking look at what it’s like to live with grief. Jack works to overcome the anger he feels toward Sylvie, the girlfriend Finn was breaking up with when he died, and Autumn, the girl he was preparing to build his life around (but whom Jack believed wasn’t good enough for Finn). But when Jack sees how Autumn’s grief matches his own, it changes their understanding of one another. Autumn’s chapters trace her life without Finn as readers follow her struggles with mental health and balancing love and loss. Those who have read the earlier book will better connect with and feel for these characters, particularly since they’ll have a more well-rounded impression of Finn. The pain and anger is well written, and the novel highlights the most troublesome aspects of young adulthood: overconfidence sprinkled with heavy insecurities, fear-fueled decisions, bad communication, and brash judgments. Characters are cued white.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781728276229

Page Count: 416

Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2024

TEENS & YOUNG ADULT SOCIAL THEMES | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT FICTION | TEENS & YOUNG ADULT ROMANCE

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BookBrowse Reviews I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

I'll Give You the Sun

by Jandy Nelson

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Literary Fiction
• Young Adults
• Contemporary
• Coming of Age
• Dealing with Loss
• Strong Women
• Magical or Supernatural
• Top 20 Best Books of 2014

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About this Book

Book awards.

• Media Reviews
• Reader Reviews

With gorgeous prose and memorable characters, this novel for young adults explores loss and grief in deeply moving ways.

Jude and Noah are twins. They are also artists. When they are 13, Noah draws a picture and Jude falls madly in love with it. She asks Noah if she can have it, and Noah replies:

This shocks me. She's never asked for a drawing before. I'm horrible at giving them away. "For the stars, oceans, and all the trees, I'll consider it," I say, knowing she'll never agree. She knows how badly I want the sun and the trees. We've been dividing up the world since we were five. I'm kicking butt at the moment – universe domination is within my grasp for the first time. Are you kidding?" she says, standing up straight…"That leaves me just the flowers, Noah." Fine, I think. She'll never do it. It's settled, but it isn't… "Okay" she says. "Trees, stars, oceans, Fine." "And the sun, Jude." "Oh, all right," she says, totally surprising me. "I'll give you the sun."

The twins have played this game all their lives: trading the world for their desires. But when Jandy Nelson's second novel, I'll Give You The Sun , opens, Jude and Noah's hearts have been broken and burst wide open. Nelson's structure is unique and, quite honestly, brilliant. The story is told in long, alternating chapters — Noah tells his half before their mother's car accident, when the twins are 13; and Jude tells hers after, when they are 16. What happened in the three years in between? The time is thick with miscommunication, deception and silence. Noah and Jude, once inseparable, have been torn apart. But why? They each only know their half of what happened, and as the reader learns the whole truth, so do they. I'll Give You The Sun opens grief wide and examines it with a magnifying glass. Noah and Jude have lost their mother, and this colors (or drains the color from) their lives. Also gone, is their grandmother, who was a large, eccentric presence. On top of these deaths, they have experienced other challenges. Their father has withdrawn from them, Noah has not gotten into the art school he was desperate to attend, Jude is moments away from being kicked out of the same school, and, front and center, is the loss of their friendship. Nelson gets at that grief with prose that is simply spectacular. It is visceral and, just like the cover of the young adult novel, – a burst of colorful rays growing out of the title – it explodes with emotion. Noah's point of view is visual, and Jude's is sensual and physical, full of references to bodies, feelings, and the intersection of the two. Noah imagines paintings inside his head, making art out of every emotion he feels. Jude holds tight to her dead grandmother's eccentric superstitions, all kept in a "Bible" (scrapbook) that she clutches, desperately hoping that she can find some solution to the guilt and grief she feels. Here is Noah:

I start to run, start to turn into air, the blue careening off of the sky, careening after me, as I sink into green, shades and shades of it, blending, spinning into yellow, freaking yellow, then head-on colliding into the punk-hair purple of lupine: everywhere. I vacuum it in, all of it, in – (SELF-PORTRAIT: Boy Detonates Grenade of Awesome) – getting happy now, the gulpy, out-of-breath kind that makes you feel you have a thousand lives crammed inside your measly one…

And here is Jude, describing her father:

His pants are always too big and belted awkwardly so he looks like a scarecrow, like if someone pulled the belt he'd turn into a pile of straw. This might be my fault. Grandma and I have largely taken over the kitchen, using the bible as cookbook: To bring joy back to a grieving family, sprinkle three tablespoons of crushed eggshells over every meal.

Through gorgeous poetic language, and no-holds-barred examination of both emotion and its consequences, Nelson reminds us that we can only ever know our own perspective, and that seeking out other people's is the key to seeing the whole picture, and to survival. But in the end, this novel is a plea for deep love, and a testament to its power to heal. You don't read it as much as ingest it, gulp by gulp. It is that rich. It is that big and that alive. In I'll Give You The Sun , Jandy Nelson gives her readers the trees, the stars, the oceans and, yes, the sun.

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Book Review For Teens: I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson’s award-winning YA novel I’ll Give You the Sun delivers love, connection, and human frailty—along with a surprising twist.

TEEN REVIEW | by Mina Jones

I received the book I’ll Give You the Sun from my aunt about a year ago. It has been one of my favorite novels ever since. It has a beautiful balance of character development and story, and Noah and Jude (who are twins) are such different characters, and it all makes for a wonderful, harmonious, and relatable story.

Read More: Sibling Rivalry Advice: Why Less Can Be More When It Comes To Rivalry

I’ll Give You the Sun is a unique book in the sense that not only does the narrator switch back and forth between the two main characters, but the timeline alternates along with the narrator. Jude and Noah’s voices are so different yet complementary. They push the plot along, keeping the reader guessing until the big reveal at the end of the book.

Noah’s story takes place when he and Jude are 13 years old, and Jude’s story follows up when they are 16. Their stories come together at these different times to frame, and later explain, what happens to characters in both future and past, resulting in a very rich and complex storyline.

I’ll Give You the Sun

The characters aren’t lacking in depth, either. Noah is a talented artist struggling with bullies and his emerging sexuality. Jude has regrets about her past and lives according to her dead grandmother’s superstitions. They both have relatable and surprising experiences as they navigate their teen years. Neither Noah nor Jude is perfect—in fact, they are far from it. But that’s just what makes their characters remarkable yet easy to understand.

I’ll Give You the Sun manages to tackle difficult subject matter cleverly and successfully. It also has elements reminiscent of the book Simon vs. the Homo Sapien Agenda, popularized by the recent film “Love, Simon,” so I would certainly recommend it to fans of that movie.

I’ll Give You the Sun takes many subjects and puts them all into a format that is both unconventional and fascinating. It’s a book that, based on my experience, readers would enjoy immensely.

Mina Jones is an eighth grader at Haas Hall Academy in Fayetteville, AR. She is Jess Lahey’s niece.

PARENT REVIEW | Jess Lahey

Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun was recommended to me by a friend, and I was immediately drawn into the book’s world of smart, interesting, and engaging characters. I’ve probably purchased 15 copies of this book in the past year, and every person I’ve given it to, adult and teen alike, has adored it.

The central characters and narrators, Noah and Jude, are twins with secrets. For most of their lives, Noah and Jude were close friends, connected by blood, artistic talent , and their quirky family. Something—at first, the reader does not know what—has come between them, however, and their relationship has changed. Noah and Jude are no longer close, no longer trust each other, and have lost faith in the bonds that hold their family together.

I fell in love with Noah immediately, as his character struggles to conceal and understand his homosexuality and artistic talents while maintaining a sense of humor about the futility of trying to bend the world to his expectations.

Noah yearns to be an artist. His understanding of the world and of the people around him are framed in terms of portraits, visual descriptions that fill Noah’s mental gallery. We pass by portraits of shame, humiliation, fear, yearning, and love, and through these descriptions, develop a clear picture of Noah and his life.

Jandy Nelson Books

Jude, however, defies mere visual description. Jude doesn’t want to be seen by Noah or by the reader, and, consequently, remains a mystery to all of us. Where Noah shows, Jude tells, but only what she wants people to know—and then, only when she’s ready.

I was impatient, I have to admit, as I read I’ll Give You the Sun . I wanted answers that would help me understand what caused Noah and Jude to lose each other when they should have been each other’s closest allies.

According to author Jandy Nelson’s website, one of her favorite quotes is by Virginia Woolf, from the novel To the Lighthouse : “The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.”

Read More: Book Review: Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse

Don’t fret, faithful reader: Noah and Jude’s revelations do come, eventually, in the form of small illuminations, and they are well worth your patience and effort.

Jess Lahey is a teacher and the author of The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed.

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Look Inside

I'll Give You the Sun

By jandy nelson, category: teen & young adult fiction | teen & young adult social issues.

Oct 27, 2015 | ISBN 9780142425763 | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 --> | Young Adult | ISBN 9780142425763 --> Buy

Sep 16, 2014 | ISBN 9780803734968 | 6 x 9 --> | Young Adult | ISBN 9780803734968 --> Buy

Sep 16, 2014 | ISBN 9781101593844 | Young Adult | ISBN 9781101593844 --> Buy

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Oct 27, 2015 | ISBN 9780142425763 | Young Adult

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About I’ll Give You the Sun

A New York Times bestseller • One of Time Magazine ’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time • Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Stonewall Honor Book The radiant, award-winning story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, Becky Albertalli, and Adam Silvera “Dazzling.”— The New York Times Book Review “A blazing prismatic explosion of color . “— Entertainment Weekly “Powerful and well-crafted . . . Stunning.” —Time Magazine “We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.” At first, Jude and her twin brother are NoahandJude; inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them. Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor. The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world. From the acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere, this exhilarating novel will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

A New York Times bestseller • One of Time Magazine ’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time • Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award • A Stonewall Honor Book The radiant, award-winning story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, Becky Albertalli, and Adam Silvera “Dazzling.” — The New York Times Book Review “A blazing prismatic explosion of color . ” — Entertainment Weekly “Powerful and well-crafted . . . Stunning.” — Time Magazine “We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.” At first, Jude and her twin brother are NoahandJude; inseparable. Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude wears red-red lipstick, cliff-dives, and does all the talking for both of them. Years later, they are barely speaking. Something has happened to change the twins in different yet equally devastating ways . . . but then Jude meets an intriguing, irresistible boy and a mysterious new mentor. The early years are Noah’s to tell; the later years are Jude’s. But they each have only half the story, and if they can only find their way back to one another, they’ll have a chance to remake their world. This radiant, award-winning novel from the acclaimed author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Also by Jandy Nelson

About Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson is the New York Times bestselling author of I’ll Give You the Sun, which received the Printz Award, was a Stonewall Honor Book, and was named one of TIME’s 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Her critically acclaimed… More about Jandy Nelson

Product Details

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Praise for I’ll Give You the Sun : Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award Winner of a Stonewall Honor One of Time Magazine’s 100 Best YA Books of All Time New York Times bestseller New York Times Book Review Notable Children’s Book of the Year TIME Magazine Top Ten Young Adult Book of the Year Boston Globe Best Young Adult Novel of the Year Huffington Post Top 12 Young Adult Book of the Year Cybil’s Award Finalist YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction of the Year for Young Adults Rainbow List Selection Top Ten of the Year  Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year School Library Journal Best Book of the Year Booklist Edtior’s Choice Book of the Year Bustle.com Top 25 Young Adult Novel of the Year “ This is the big one —the blazing story of once inseparable twins whose lives are torn apart by tragedy.”— Entertainment Weekly , “5 YA Novels to Watch Out For” “Dazzling.”— The New York Times Book Review “Have you ever wanted to put a book in all of your friends’ hands? This is that kind of book . . . Heartbreakingly honest.”— San Francisco Chronicle “Bold, even breathtaking . You get the sense [the] characters are bursting through the words, breaking free of normal metaphors and constructions, jubilantly trying to rise up from the prison of language . . . The book celebrates art’s capacity to heal, but it also shows us how we excavate meaning from the art we cherish, and how we find reflections of ourselves within it. . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is a dazzling mirror”—Lauren Oliver for the New York Times Book Review “Both structurally virtuosic . . . and emotionally wrenching. That alone is a rare combination in literature, YA or otherwise. But then add in the characters . . . This book is a rebuttal to anyone suggesting YA, because it tells stories of young people, is somehow of lesser stuff. I’ll Give You The Sun is literature. Full stop. In my opinion, it’s not just the best YA book of the year, but one of the best books of the year.”—Gayle Forman for Parade “This book is many things at once, all of them engrossing. It’s a book where teenagers think in almost indulgently poetic language while still sounding genuinely adolescent. It’s two separate but equally intoxicating love stories. . . . Most of all, it’s the mystery of what happened to tear Noah and Jude apart, and what—if anything—can bring them back together again.”—NPR’s Guide to 2014’s Great Reads “This book is about many things: grief, sexuality, creativity, bravery, identity, guilt. But mostly it’s about love. Be prepared with more tissues than you needed for The Fault in Our Stars , a chunky notebook to scribble down all the quotes and a handful of witty responses when people ask why you’re chuckling to yourself in the corner. Because this book will make you realise how beautiful words can be.”— The Guardian “Simply unforgettable . . . . If you’re looking for a book that’s deep and powerful and beautiful, look no further. You must read I’ll Give You the Sun .”—Lisa Parkin for the Huffington Post ’s “Top 12 Young Adult Books of 2014” ★ “Readers are meant to feel big things, and they will—Nelson’s novel brims with emotion (grief, longing, and love in particular) as Noah, Jude, and the broken individuals in their lives find ways to heal.”— Publishers Weekly , starred review ★ “A resplendent novel…Art and wonder fill each page.”— School Library Journal , starred review ★ “Nelson’s prose is replete with moments of stunning emotional clarity, and her characters are as irresistible to the reader as they are to each other . . . No matter how they hurt each other, the love among all the characters is huge here—huge enough to destroy, huge enough to forgive, and huge enough to put their broken world back together again.”— BCCB , starred review ★ “In an electric style evoking the highly visual imaginations of the young narrators, Nelson captures the fraught, antagonistic, yet deeply loving relationship Jude and Noah share.”— Booklist , starred review ★ “An intricate and absorbing work of art emerges from the details of the interlaced sections. Few novels about twins capture so well the rewards and challenges . . . or the way in which people who have loved us remain in our minds after their deaths.”— VOYA , perfect score ★ “Readers will be hooked.”— Library Media Connection “The novel is structurally brilliant, moving back and forth across timelines to reveal each teen’s respective exhilaration and anguish . . . Nelson’s prose scintillates . . . dizzyingly visual . . . Here’s a narrative experience readers won’t soon forget.”— Kirkus “Told in poetic prose with the barest hint of magical realism . . . a compelling meditation on love, grief, sexuality, family, and fate.”— Horn Book “I’ve gotten so involved in a book that I’ve missed my subway stop because I was reading; Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun might be the first time where I saw my stop and skipped it anyway.”— The Daily Beast “ I’ll Give You the Sun is a daydream . . . otherworldly and mesmerizing . . . Nelson’s evocative language envelops one’s imagination . . . an exquisite surrender to wonder and possibilities .”— The Boston Globe “ I’ll Give You the Sun gives the word ‘intense’ new meaning . . . a novel that makes you want to go out and skydive, but if you can read a novel like this now and then, you don’t need to.”— Newsday “This one is going to be big… It is full of all the good stuff that sticks with you: love, identity struggles, loss, betrayal, and the complications of family, so you’ll probably feel all the feels .”—Bustle.com “A blazing prismatic explosion of color . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is that rare, immersive teen novel: To read it is a coming-of-age experience in itself. “— Entertainment Weekly “[These] viewpoints—Noah’s at 13 and 14, Jude’s at 16—intersect in surprising ways, and eventually come together in a satisfying, if bittersweet, conclusion. . . . Young adults will learn they’re not alone in navigating the emotional highs and lows of finding their identity; older readers will have moments of wistful recognition. I, for one, devoured this book.”—Montreal Gazette “It’s a meditation on life, art, family, fate, and how even the most broken people can help fix one another . . . This book will tear through you like a hurricane, leaving you in ruined awe.”— Huffington Post “Ingeniously told from the alternating perspectives of its spunky twin protagonists, this (technically) young adult noel jubilantly holds its own against the fall’s grown-up offerings, with dead-on insights about surviving youth—and family.”— O, the Oprah Magazine “You’d think that we were plugging The Fault in Our Stars , but even that comparison might sell short I’ll Give You the Sun … [It’s] planted firmly in the positive, making for a gravity-defying, life-affirming experience.”— San Francisco Magazine “[Nelson] has an electrifying facility with description, especially how her characters feel at a given moment . . . [Jude], Noah, and the fine cast of subsidiary characters . . . are most memorable for how they poignantly illustrate the most basic of human emotions—love, grief, shame, remorse, joy.”— Chicago Tribune “One of Fall’s most anticipated YA books . . . it’s filled with complex and controversial themes that are relatable to anyone who has struggled with identity, sexuality, family ties and other struggles of growing up.”—Mashable.com “Will pluck at your heartstrings.”— People “A wild, beautiful, and profoundly moving novel. Jandy Nelson’s writing is so electric, so alive, her pages practically glow in the dark.” —Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City “Jandy Nelson is a rare, explosive talent, and one of the best writers working today. Her prose is vivid, breathtaking, and drenched in passion , and her stories remind me why words can change the world.” —Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series  “I love this book. Jandy Nelson is my new writing hero . Read this book. She’ll be your favorite author as well.” —Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times bestselling author of Counting by 7s “Jandy Nelson’s writing is poetic and mesmerizing . More importantly, Nelson weaves a novel that seeps into your bones like fire on a cold day . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is a novel that promises a story like nothing else and then delivers it.” —Garret Freymann-Weyr, author of Printz Honor book, My Heartbeat “This is a stunning , artfully woven story. My heart burst open at the blazing, unforgettable end. Magnificent .” —Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone “An extraordinary book! I’ve never read anything like it . Lyrical-unique-passionate-magical-tragic-hopeful—Nelson’s characters will fly off the page and into your heart.” —Nancy Garden, author of Annie on my Mind Praise for The Sky is Everywhere : “Nelson’s first novel is tender, romantic, and loaded with passion.”— The Horn Book “The author brilliantly navigates Lennie’s course between despair and hope, sorrow and humor… a gripping love triangle.”— Shelf Awareness “In this amazing tale of love and loss, Nelson introduces a cast of characters who make the reader laugh and cry.”—NPR’s The Roundtable “Nearly everyone who’s staggering through life in the wake of a loved one’s death will recognize themselves in this brilliant, piercing story.”— The Denver Post * “This is distinguished by the dreamy California setting and poetic images that will draw readers into Lennie’s world…”— Publishers Weekly , starred review “A joy to read. You’ll remember [it] long after you’ve turned the last page.”— The Romantic Times * “It’s romantic without being gooey and tear-jerking without being campy—what more could a reader want?”— BCCB , starred review * “This is a passionate, vulnerable, wonderfully complete and irresistible book.”— VOYA , starred review “[Nelson] writes with abandon… it’s a headlong kind of book, preferably devoured at a single setting.”— Los Angeles Times “Brimming with humor and life, full of music and the poems Lennie drops all over town, The Sky is Everywhere explores betrayal and forgiveness through a vibrant cast of characters.”— SLJ “Those who think young adult books can’t be as literary, rich, and mature as their adult counterparts will be disabused of that notion after reading The Sky is Everywhere … A finely-drawn portrait of grief and first love.”— The Daily Beast “A story of love, loss, and healing that will resonate with readers long after they’ve finished reading.”— Booklist “A story about love and loss… both heartfelt and literary.”— Kirkus Reviews “ Sky is both a profound meditation on loss and grieving and an exhilarating and very sexy romance. The book deserves multiple readings simply to savor Nelson’s luscious language…”—NPR (chosen by Gayle Forman as one of the top five teen reads of 2010) “How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic, and warm-blooded novel.”— The Guardian “An addictive, romantic, heartbreaking, and wise tale of one girl’s epic loss—and equally epic self-discovery. Seriously, stop reading this blurb; start reading this book!”— Gayle Forman , author of the New York Times Bestseller If I Stay “Wow. I sobbed my eyes out and then laughed through the tears. I have not fallen in love with a story and its characters like this in a long time. Stunning, heartbreaking, hilarious. A story that shakes the earth.”—An Na, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award and National Book Award Finalist “Okay, I admit it. I have a huge crush on this book—it’s beautiful, brilliant, passionate, funny, sexy, and deep. Come to think of it, I might even want to marry this book.”—Sonya Sones, author of What My Mother Doesn’t Know “Full of heart, quirky charm, and beautiful writing, The Sky Is Everywhere simply shines.”—Deb Caletti, National Book Award Finalist and author of The Secret Life of Prince Charming “Jandy Nelson’s story of grief somehow manages to be an enchantment, a celebration, a romance—without forsaking the rock-hard truths of loss.”—Sara Zarr, National Book Award Finalist and author of Story of a Girl and Sweethearts “ The Sky Is Everywhere evokes the intensity of desire and agony of heartache with breathtaking clarity. This beautifully written story will leave an indelible impression upon your soul.”—Susane Colasanti, author of When It Happens A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Title A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee A Junior Library Guild Selection Translated into seventeen different languages

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I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson | Book Review

I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell Jude and her brother, Noah, are incredibly close twins. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude surfs and 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 divisive ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as an unpredictable new mentor. 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.    This radiant, fully alive, sometimes very funny novel from the critically acclaimed author of  The Sky Is Everywhere  will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.  "A wild, beautiful, and profoundly moving novel. Jandy Nelson’s writing is so electric, so alive, her pages practically glow in the dark." Ransom Riggs, New York Times  bestselling author of  Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children  and  Hollow City     "Jandy Nelson is a rare, explosive talent, and one of the best writers working today. Her prose is vivid, breathtaking, and drenched in passion, and her stories remind me why words can change the world." -Tahereh Mafi,  New York Times  bestselling author of the  Shatter Me  series.    "I love this book. Jandy Nelson is my new writing hero. Read this book.  She'll be your favorite author as well." Holly Goldberg Sloan,  New York Times  bestselling author of  Counting by 7s  Jandy Nelson’s writing is poetic and mesmerizing. More importantly, Nelson weaves a novel that seeps into your bones like fire on a cold day . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is a novel that promises a story like nothing else and then delivers it.” Garret Freymann-Weyr, author of Printz Honor book,  My Heartbeat      "An extraordinary book! I've never read anything like it. Lyrical-unique-passionate-magical-tragic-hopeful--Nelson's characters will fly off the page and into your heart." --Nancy Garden, author of Annie on my Mind.

This book gave me the sun. After finishing the last page, which I just did literally two seconds ago, I feel as though Jandy Nelson has taken the sun into her hands and pushed it into my heart with her brilliant prose and words. I think it’s a herculean task to review, to do justice to a book that has made you feel so much, that took you on this grand journey where you come out the other end looking at the world in a whole new light. Friends, I did not know that I would end up saying this but Jandy Nelson has surpassed  The Sky Is Everywhere with her latest release  I’ll Give You The Sun . I am feeling that paradox where if every book Jandy Nelson writes is as good as  I’ll Give You The Sun and  The Sky Is Everywhere then I would willingly wait years for that greatest, but at the same time waiting years IS SO HARD.

I’ll Give You The Sun is told in two timelines. The first timeline is told by Noah at 13 years old, describing the events leading up to this huge rift between Noah and his twin sister Jude. The second timeline is told by Jude at 16 years old after the rift and this incredible turning point, that as soon as Jude’s first chapter began, I had to text Jamie a giant WTF IS THIS because it took me by total surprise. Also, I want to be totally upfront with you guys and tell you that I was actually kind of dreading this book at first because I noticed that the chapters were really, really long and long chapters make me nervous. I’ll admit, it took me awhile to find my rhythm and find my groove as a reader with this book, but eventually it was there and I fell in love. These parallel storylines are perfect with how they unfold. And now, as I describe the two storylines I will do my absolute best to not spoil you.

The Invisible Museum (Noah)

Noah’s sections and chapters are all entitled “The Invisible Museum” and yes, this does have meaning but you don’t find out what it is until, pretty much the end. So, okay in Noah’s timeline and chapters, like I mentioned above, we learn what leads up to and causes the rift between Noah and Jude. During these chapters, Noah and Jude, and their mom and dad all still live together. Their grandmother Sweetwine has died pretty recently and left Jude her bible. Now, this isn’t a bible in the Biblical sense, but a book of collected superstitions having to do with luck. During this part, Noah and Jude decide they want to apply to the California School for Arts. Noah is this sensitive artist who sees the world in such a unique and beautiful way. He is constantly painting pictures in his mind. It’s not all perfect for Noah, though, as he experiences bullying from these older boys. Also, Noah is hiding a secret. You see, he’s gay. These chapters tell a story of Noah’s first love and all the feelings of longing, envy, tenderness and anger that an all consuming love can bring.

The History Of Luck (Jude)

Jude’s sections and chapters are all entitled “The History Of Luck”, there is also a part where her chapter title has meaning. In Jude’s storyline, she has cut off all the characteristic blonde hair that she has in Noah’s storyline. In fact, her very first chapter has this huge and giant reveal that knocked me right over. The Jude we meet in “The History Of Luck” is very different from the Jude in “The Invisible Museum.” She’s more repressed and sad with very good reason. Her story is a story of redemption and forgiveness and ghosts. It’s glorious. And beautiful. So, anyways, Jude is known as CJ at her school because all of the clay sculptures she tries to make end up breaking. So, she decides that she wants to work in stone. And well, that’s all I can tell you for that bit because this book is best unraveled bit by bit and not with a review. Let’s just say that Jude’s storyline is every bit as engaging as Noah’s and her’s is the story where the two find their way again. It’s absolutely perfect.

My emotions totally ran the gamut while reading  I’ll Give You The Sun . I was up and down and just, all over the place. I have to say that reading Jandy Nelson’s latest book put me in this sort of dreamlike trance state and that’s totally because of Jandy Nelson’s prose. There are lots and lots and lots of pages that I just want to underline the whole entire page. If I knew where on Earth my highlighter tabs were, the pages would look like a rainbow. I just, this book totally took my breath away. With the family relationships and the reveals and the secrets and the love, because yes there’s kissing and romance, I am so overcome with feelings. I have not even touched on every single element with this review, but honestly, I don’t need to. I know or rather, I hope that this will be enough to make you want to read Nelson’s latest book. It was worth the wait.

Read  I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson as soon as you get your hands on a copy. It is a transformative read.

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April is in her 30s and created Good Books And Good Wine. She works for a non-profit. April always has a book on hand. In her free time she can be found binge watching The Office with her husband and toddler, spending way too much time on Pinterest or exploring her neighborhood.

Your review is lovely, April. It is, indeed, really hard to put into words how amazing and wonderful I’ll Give You the Sun is, and how incredibly unexpected and moving the experience of reading it is. I really loved Nelson’s writing, and can’t wait for more of her novels!

OH!! Alright, I have to take this off of the BEA shelf and read it. I love this author’s work!

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I’ll Give You The Sun

• The Sky Is Everywhere

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. This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

• Winner of the 2015 Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
• A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book
• Winner of Bank Street’s 2015 Josette Frank Book Award
• Winner of the NCIBA and the NCBA and the James Cook Award
• YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults
• Rainbow List Top Ten 2015
• A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
• A  Time Magazine  Top Ten YA of the Year (#3)
• An NPR Great Reads of the Year
• Apple iBooks’ Best Teen Fiction of the Year
• A Boston Globe Best YA Book of the Year
• A  Publishers Weekly  Best Book of the Year
• A School Library Journal  Best Book of the Year
• A Booklist Editor’s Choice Book of the Year
• An Amazon Best Book of the Year
• Five starred reviews from  Publishers Weekly ,  Booklist ,  School Library Journal, BCCB, LMC,  and a perfect 10 from Voya
• A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year
• A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
• A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
• Winner of the 2014 Bookbrowse Award for Best Young Adult Novel
• A kobo Best Book of the Year
• A Bustle.com Best YA of the Year (#2)
• #1 on Autumn 2014 Indie Next List
• Optioned by Warner Brothers with Denise Di Novi and Allison Greenspan to produce
• Debuted at #8 on New York Times Best Seller List
• Tayshas Reading List: Top Ten of the Year
• One of  Entertainment Weekly ’s “five novels to watch out for” in 2014
• Already licensed in 32 countries
• One of Apple iBooks Ten Best Novels of September
• One of Amazon’s Big Fall Books and Best Books of September (the Spotlight Pick of the month)
• One of the  The Hollywood Reporter ‘s Fall’s 10 Buzziest Books
• Goodreads top six Best Books of the Month
• Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
• Junior Library Guild Selection

Buy   I’ll Give You the Sun

“A blazing, prismatic explosion of color . . . Nelson’s gifts in tackling huge subjects — death, grief, all-consuming love — with humor and gravitas will draw comparisons to the two reigning superstars of non-apocalyptic YA lit, John Green and Rainbow Rowell. But the intensity of her writing stands alone . . . Whether you’re at that age right now or you’ve forgotten what it feels like,  I’ll Give You the Sun  is that rare, immersive teen novel: To read it is a coming-of-age experience in itself.”

— Entertainment Weekly

“The novel is structurally brilliant, moving back and forth across timelines to reveal each teen’s respective exhilaration and anguish  . . . Nelson’s prose scintillates . . . dizzyingly visual . . . startling physicality . . . Here’s a narrative experience readers won’t soon forget.” 

★”A resplendent novel . . . Art and wonder fill each page.”

— School Library Journal , Starred Review

★ “Readers are meant to feel big things, and they will—Nelson’s novel brims with emotion.”

— Publishers Weekly , Starred Review

★”Nelson structures her sophomore novel brilliantly, alternating between Noah’s first-person narrative in the years before . . . and Jude’s in the years following, slowly revealing the secrets the siblings hide from each other and the ways they each throw their hearts into their artwork. In an electric style evoking the highly visual imaginations of the young narrators, Nelson captures the fraught, antagonistic, yet deeply loving relationship Jude and Noah share.”

— Booklist , starred review

★”Nelson’s prose is replete with moments of stunning emotional clarity, and her characters are as irresistible to the reader as they are to each other, particularly young Noah, whose vulnerability is laced with an enviable sense of the aesthetic raptures of everyday life. The controlling ethos throughout, though, is love: no matter how they hurt each other, the love among all the characters is huge here—huge enough to destroy, huge enough to forgive, and huge enough to put their broken world back together again.”

— BCCB , Starred Review

“I’ll Give You the Sun  is a daydream . . . otherworldly, and mesmerizing . . . Nelson’s evocative language envelops one’s imagination . . . an exquisite surrender to wonder and possibilities.”

— The Boston Globe

“Breathtaking. You get the sense [the] characters are bursting through the words, breaking free of normal metaphors and constructions, jubilantly trying to rise up from the prison of language . . . The book celebrates art’s capacity to heal, but it also shows us how we excavate meaning from the art we cherish, and how we find reflections of ourselves within it . . .  I’ll Give You the Sun  is a dazzling mirror.”

— The   New York Times

“Sun is so much more than just another teenage love story with Real Life Themes; it’s a meditation on life, art, family, fate, and how even the most broken people can help fix one another. Like an artist with a paintbrush, Jandy Nelson weaves it all together to create a reading experience that can only be described as synesthetic. You can taste Noah’s passion, hear the echo of Jude’s grief, and feel the words leap off the page and whip across your face like grains of sand in the wind. This book will tear through you like a hurricane, leaving you in ruined awe. If you want to remember what it’s like to truly surrender to a book and let it pull you under like a riptide, pick up I’ll Give You the Sun and bask in it.”

— The Huffington Post

“Ingeniously told from the alternating perspectives of its spunky twin protagonists, this (technically) young adult novel jubilantly holds its own against the fall’s grown-up offerings, with dead-on insights about surviving youth—and family.”

— O, the Oprah Magazine

“A book I’ll continue to recommend for the rest of the year and beyond . . . Picking up clues and peeling back layers page-by-page is an unforgettable experience.  I’ll Give You the Sun  captures several complicated relationships in one remarkable story that has me wondering if it has left an indelible mark on my mind.  I hope so.”

—Amazon, Editor’s choice for the Spotlight Pick for Best Books of September

“A gravity-defying, life-affirming experience.”

— San Francisco Magazine

“Dynamic . . . (Nelson) has an electrifying facility with description, especially of how her characters feel at a given moment . . . (Jude), Noah and the fine cast of subsidiary characters . . . are most memorable for how poignantly they illustrate the most basic of human emotions — love, grief, shame, remorse, joy.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Gives the word “intense” new meaning . . . “ I’ll Give You the Sun   is a novel that makes you want to go out and skydive, but if you can read a novel like this now and then, you don’t need to.”

“Occasionally, I’ve gotten so involved in a book that I’ve missed my subway stop because I was reading; Jandy Nelson’s  I’ll Give You the Sun  might be the first time where I saw my stop and skipped it anyway . . .  Give  is a breathtaking novel about secrets—how keeping them can destroy us and releasing them can set us free. Yet for all its dark moments (which include suicide attempts, sexual assault, and infidelity), the writing is suffused with playfulness and love. Nelson manages the nearly impossible task of keeping the reader on constant tenterhooks, yet never letting us doubt that she has the best interest of all her characters at heart . . . But what really sets  Give  apart from other YA novels is its writing. Nelson doesn’t pander to her readers. Her sentences and structure are complex and imaginative. If you enjoy the high-intensity pace of young-adult writing, but often find yourself wishing for a semi-colon or a mind-blowing metaphor,  I ’ ll Give You the Sun  is the book for you.”

— The Daily Beast

“This book is about many things: grief, sexuality, creativity, bravery, identity, guilt. But mostly it’s about love. Be prepared with more tissues than you needed for The Fault in Our Stars, a chunky notebook to scribble down all the quotes and a handful of witty responses when people ask why you’re chuckling to yourself in the corner. Because this book will make you realise how beautiful words can be.”

— The Guardian

“(A) super-smart coming-of-age story . . . you’ll feel this book in a big way.”

— Teen Vogue

‘The story is full of compelling, big characters who are fully saturated with emotion and witticisms and are also industrious and creative; Jude sculpts, and Noah paints. Charting the spectrum of mountainous teenage emotion, and though written vibrantly, it remains believable, tenable and real.”

— The Globe and Mail

“One of Fall’s most anticipated YA books . . .  While the novel falls under YA, it’s filled with complex and controversial themes that are relatable to anyone who has struggled with identity, sexuality, family ties and other struggles of growing up.”

“This one is going to be big . . .  It is full of all the good stuff that sticks with you: love, identity struggles, loss, betrayal, and the complications of family, so you’ll . . . feel all the feels.”

“An examination of finding and learning what it means to live for yourself . . . compelling to the very end.”

— RT Book Reviews

“This is a beautifully written story.”

From fellow Authors:

“A wild, beautiful, and profoundly moving novel. Jandy Nelson’s writing is so electric, so alive, her pages practically glow in the dark.”

—Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and Hollow City

“Jandy Nelson is a rare, explosive talent. Her prose is vivid, breathtaking, and drenched in passion, and her stories remind me why words can change the world.”

—Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of the Shatter Me series

“An extraordinary book! I’ve never read anything like it. Lyrical-unique-passionate-magical-tragic-hopeful—Nelson’s characters will fly off the page and into your heart.”

— Nancy Garden, author of Annie on My Mind

“Jandy Nelson’s writing is poetic and mesmerizing. More importantly, Nelson weaves a novel that seeps into your bones like fire on a cold day . . . I’ll Give You the Sun is a novel that promises a story like nothing else and then delivers it.”

— Garret Freymann-Weyr, author of Printz Honor book My Heartbeat

“I love this book. Jandy Nelson is my new writing hero. Read it. She’ll be your favorite author as well.”

— Holly Goldberg Sloan, New York Times bestselling author of Counting by 7s

“This is a stunning, artfully woven story. My heart burst open at the blazing, unforgettable end. Magnificent.”

—Nova Ren Suma, author of Imaginary Girls and 17 & Gone

Spoil The Ending

how the book or movie ended

The Ending of I’ll Give You the Sun

This post is full of spoilers. If you want a review without spoilers, visit I’ll Give You the Sun Book Review .

In I’ll Give You the Sun , we follow Noah and Jude from age 13 to 16. The book goes back and forth in time, starting with Noah.

Noah is always himself, refusing to succumb to the expectations of society, even if that gets him bullied. Then, while he is being tormented by two bullies who are trying to carry him to throw him into the ocean, one of them feels that he has a boner and is shocked into leaving him alone. Noah’s response is to hide within himself. He thinks everyone suspects but no one says a thing.

Dividing the Parents

Jude lives according to The Bible, a book of wisdom and superstitions from her grandmother, who visits her and speaks with her as a ghost. Jude can take on different personalities. She has friends at school and enjoys hanging out with them. She also looks out for Noah, taking care of him with her social capital. She’s also exasperated by him “ Do you have to be so you all the time, Noah? “.

Noah and his father, Benjamin, do not get along. All Noah remembers are all the criticisms and admonishments from his father for not being strong enough, for not standing up for himself, for not being into sports. He thinks that Jude owns Dad and so he gets to own Mom who lavishes praise on him for his artwork. Jude feels left out.

Jude’s artwork are sand people that she carves but her mother has never seen them. Noah has seen them and even taken pictures and he worries that Jude may be a better artist than him. When he sees an invitation from Jude to their mom to come to the beach to see her work, Noah rips the note and throws it away. In any case, Dianna decides that her talented children must go to California School of the Arts, CSA, and not the local high school.

High School Dreams

The application process for CSA is competitive but Noah is confident he will be accepted. To prepare, he attends a summer drawing class through the classroom window. He even gets a footstool and stand, which one of the live models, a British guy, stole for him. He only met the model at the school once before the model was let go for showing up intoxicated. When Jude saw the picture that Noah had drawn of the model, she was instantly drawn to it and had to have it. She gave Noah the sun, stars, oceans and all the trees in exchange for the drawing. This left her only with flowers in their game of dividing up the world.

Noah had a bright summer. He met a boy, Brian, and fell in love even though nothing physical happened between them. He learned more about jealousy when he realized that Brian was popular in his school and a chameleon like Jude. Yet, he trusted Brian until a party where he thought that Brian and Jude hooked up. While he had his first kiss at that party, he could not forgive his sister for going after his best friend.

Jude was the popular one and suddenly, through Brian, there was Noah in her friend circle. She accused Noah of taking everything from her, her mom and her friends. She wanted revenge for that and Brian was part of her plan. In retaliation, Noah found the picture of the model that she’d bought and tore it to shreds, leaving the pieces in her room. Jude did not want to relinquish the photo so she stored all the pieces in a plastic bag under her bed.

When Brian returned to visit at Christmas, he and Noah finally kissed. But then Brian got cold feet, worried that he would lose his scholarship if people knew he was gay. Noah was distraught. When he saw Brian together with another girl, he told her that Brian was gay. That broke their friendship.

Jude and Zephyr hooked up at a party after she turned 14. He was almost four years older. Although he said she could say no, she did not feel like she could say no. Nothing felt okay afterward and she declared a boy boycott.

I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence. And then it was over. And then everything was.

Her mother died the next day and Jude was locked in guilt and regret.

The Parents

When the twins were 14, their parents separated and their dad moved out. Thinking that Dianna was about to tell his father that he was gay, Noah asked her not to. She surprised him by saying his father was afraid of him and thinks Noah doesn’t like him. Noah followed her to her rendezvous because he thought she was lying about who she was going to meet.

By following Dianna, Noah found out that she was having an affair with a renowned sculptor, Guillermo. When Noah confronted her, she admits that she loved Guillermo and wants to marry him.

As Dianna drove off to tell Benjamin she wanted a divorce, Noah screamed at her that he hated her. These were his last words to her as on the way, she died in a car accident. Noah told everyone, including Guillermo, that his mother was on the way to ask his father to come back home. Noah has been learning from Guillermo from the fire escape but after that, he did not return to the studio until he started following Jude years later.

Who’s the Artist?

Jude is the only Sweetwine child accepted to CSA. Jude is surprised that she got in and Noah that he did not. Noah starts to doubt his abilities and stops drawing. Instead, he starts diving from Devil’s Drop. After the first time when Jude had to rescue him from the water, she uses her friend network to keep an eye on him in case she needs to rescue him again.

Noah starts to surreptitiously work out with his dad’s weights in the garage and he joins track and field at school. Jude can no longer read his shuttered expression and the distance between them grows. Each of them has many secrets that maintain the divide.

Following Destiny

Jude’s ceramic work at CSA keeps breaking. She is convinced that her mother is doing it because she is angry with her. She’s in danger of being put on probation at CSA and needs to make a dramatic change. Her advisor and instructor, Sandy, suggests that there is one sculptor she may be able to work with locally but warns her that he rarely accepts students anymore, Guillermo. When Jude looks up Guillermo, she finds an article her mother wrote about him. His work was incredible and she was excited to work with him.

On the walk to Guillermo’s studio/home, Jude stopped at a church. There, she ran into a boy with a camera. He called her an angel and asked to take photos of her. She finally conceded, drawn to him. While she couldn’ place him, she thought he looked familiar. He said she was “the one”.

Perplexed, Jude carried on to Guillermo’s. He answered the door in a rage and after slamming the door at her, she could hear chaos going on inside. After banging the door again, the guy from the church answered the door and told her it wasn’t a good time.

Determined, a few days later, Jude climbed onto the fire escape and watched Guillermo work. She saw him carve a couple and become overcome with grief. She could see many works of couples, different from his previous work. When he caught her, he was furious. She tried to escape but he caught up with her. Her curious exchange with him caught him off guard and he invited her in for a coffee. She took that as a good sign.

Despite the offer of coffee, Guillermo would not agree to work with Jude. Overwhelmed with emotion she had been holding in since her mother’s death, not having cried since, Jude started to weep. Guillermo asked if she was weeping because of her need to make a sculpture. She said yes and he finally agreed to work with her.

Jude finds out the name of the British guy – Oscar. While he has a dorm at college, he spends a lot of time with Guillermo. Guillermo rescued him from himself, provided him a place to stay and supported him in attending AA and NA classes. Oscar was like his father and warned him away from Jude. Gui told Jude that while he loved Oscar, he wouldn’t let his daughter near him as he was too young and brash.

Despite the warnings from Guillermo, Oscar and Jude are drawn to each other. They flirt with each other and become more embroiled with each other.

Making Amends

Jude learns a lot about sculpture from Guillermo and is finally ready to create her sculpture of her mom. But then she realizes that she needs to make another sculpture first, one of her and her brother. She sketches the sculpture, the two of them together, merging. In the process of sculpting, she realizes that she needs to free both of them. She will tell her brother her secrets. To Guillermo’s dismay, she splits the sculpture into two.

Before Jude could meet Noah, she gets a call that he’s in trouble. She goes looking for him and meets Zephyr. For the first time, she confronts him, spitting at him as they race to find Noah. She tells him that she was too young and he mustn’t use any other young girl that way.

Noah’s been playing a drinking game and is about to do a foolhardy, dangerous dive. Jude gets him off the edge but then he escapes and starts once one for the jump. This time, he is tackled by Oscar. Jude is surprised to discover that Noah and Oscar know each other. Oscar calls Noah Picasso, a name from another time, when he used to live and breathe art, even drawing inside his head and with his fingers. Jude and Oscar bring Noah home.

Jude is ready to make amends. She has decided to give up her spot at CSA for Noah. She also wants to try to get Noah and Brian back together. For years, Noah had been posting on a site, trying to connect with Brian, with no answer. Jude finds Brian’s email at university and mails Noah’s note to him from an anonymous email address.

The Ending of I’ll Give you The Sun

At the end of I’ll Give You the Sun , Jude is ready to create the sculpture of her mother and shows her final sketches to Guillermo. This is how he learns that Dianna is her mother. His response is to let her know that he can’t work with her anymore. Noah is listening and watching from the fire escape. He enters the studio after Oscar. Then the wall of secrets starts to tumble. Jude realizes that her mom was in love with Guillermo, and Noah confesses that he also knew this and lied about it. Guillermo’s response is joy, Jude’s is understanding…

I had no idea who Mom was. He wasn’t being cruel. He wasn’t hogging her. He was protecting her And Dad and me. He was protecting our family.

… and grieving. She lets herself grieve.

On the walk home from Guillermo’s, the twins untangle the rest of their lies. Noah shares that he’s gay and his mom knew. Jude shares that she never mailed his CSA application. Noah’s reaction is unexpected. He is jubilant, realizing that he wasn’t rejected. Then he shows Jude his mural, one that tells all their stories. “There is the world, remade.” Jude takes photos to send CSA even though Noah says he doesn’t want to go there. His art isn’t about getting accepted into a school.

It’s about magic.

With all the secrets revealed, Jude and Noah find each other once more. They hug and are taken off their feet.

Mother’s are the parachutes.

Jude and Noah are whole.

Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.

No More Secrets

As Jude and Noah are lying on the forest floor, their dad joins them. He and Noah have also found a bridge to each other of late. It’s time to tell Benjamin the secret too. It was a relief for both of them. It made sense to the scientist in Benjamin. Jude later confessed about not mailing Noah’s application as well.

Later that night, as the Sweetwines get ready for dinner, the twins get a glimpse of the man their father used to be. He suggests that they move to a houseboat, and then he puts on some jazz. Jude is about to help with. the cooking when Oscar walks in.

Oscar tells Jude that they need to wait a few years to find each other again. He also tells her about her mother, the painter, the mother who was proud of both her children. He says he’ll wait for Jude, for their time, since she’s the girl in the prophecy from his mother.

When Noah and Jude visit Guillermo’s studio, it has been transformed. All the mess that used to be there has been cleaned. While talking about Dianna and her art, Guillermo reveals that he knows about Jude’s sand women. He submitted copies with her CSA application, anonymously. He did it because that was Dianna’s plan but she wasn’t there to do it herself. Since Benjamin said he doesn’t mind, Jude will keep working with Guillermo.

Noah made his own amends with Brian, sending him a series of drawings. Brian finally responded to his online ad inviting him to their special place, saying “I’ll be there”. Noah also received an invitation to join CSA and is deciding whether to accept; Jude doesn’t have to give up her space for him.

One week later, Brian and Noah walked out of the forest holding hands, officially coming out to his dad that way. Benjamin’s reaction was acceptance. As a ladybug landed on Jude’s hand she made a wish: “Remake the world”.

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I'll Give You the Sun (Nelson)

Book Reviews Bold, even breathtaking. You get the sense [the] characters are bursting through the words, breaking free of normal metaphors and constructions, jubilantly trying to rise up from the prison of language.... The book celebrates art’s capacity to heal, but it also shows us how we excavate meaning from the art we cherish, and how we find reflections of ourselves within it....  I’ll Give You The Sun is a dazzling mirror Lauren Oliver - New York Times Book Review I'll Give You the Sun is a daydream...otherworldly and mesmerizing.... Nelson's evocative language envelops one's imagination...an exquisite surrender to wonder and possibilities. Boston Globe [Nelson] has an electrifying facility with description, especially how her characters feel at a given moment...[Jude], Noah, and the fine cast of subsidiary characters...are most memorable for how they poignantly illustrate the most basic of human emotions—love, grief, shame, remorse, joy. Chicago Tribune This book is about many things: grief, sexuality, creativity, bravery, identity, guilt. But mostly it's about love. Be prepared with more tissues than you needed for The Fault in Our Stars , a chunky notebook to scribble down all the quotes and a handful of witty responses when people ask why you're chuckling to yourself in the corner. Because this book will make you realise how beautiful words can be. Guardian ( UK ) [These] viewpoints—Noah’s at 13 and 14, Jude's at 16—intersect in surprising ways, and eventually come together in a satisfying, if bittersweet, conclusion.... Young adults will learn they're not alone in navigating the emotional highs and lows of finding their identity; older readers will have moments of wistful recognition. I, for one, devoured this book. Montreal Gazette I'll Give You the Sun gives the word "intense" new meaning...a novel that makes you want to go out and skydive, but if you can read a novel like this now and then, you don't need to. Newsday This book is many things at once, all of them engrossing. It's a book where teenagers think in almost indulgently poetic language while still sounding genuinely adolescent. It's two separate but equally intoxicating love stories.... Most of all, it's the mystery of what happened to tear Noah and Jude apart, and what—if anything—can bring them back together again. ( Guide to 2014's Great Reads ) NPR Simply unforgettable.... If you’re looking for a book that’s deep and powerful and beautiful, look no further. You must read  I’ll Give You The Sun ( Top 12 Young Adult Books of 2014 ). Lisa Parkin - Huffington Post Both structurally virtuosic...and emotionally wrenching. That alone is a rare combination in literature, YA or otherwise. But then add in the characters.... This book is a rebuttal to anyone suggesting YA, because it tells stories of young people, is somehow of lesser stuff. I’ll Give You The Sun is literature. Full stop. In my opinion, it’s not just the best YA book of the year, but one of the best books of the year. Gayle Forman - Parade A blazing prismatic explosion of color.... I'll Give You the Sun is that rare, immersive teen novel: To read it is a coming-of-age experience in itself. Entertainment Weekly Ingeniously told from the alternating perspectives of its spunky twin protagonists, this (technically) young adult noel jubilantly holds its own against the fall's grown-up offerings, with dead-on insights about surviving youth—and family. O Magazine You'd think that we were plugging The Fault in Our Stars, but even that comparison might sell short I'll Give You the Sun.... [It's] planted firmly in the positive, making for a gravity-defying, life-affirming experience. San Francisco Magazine ( Starred review .) Twins Noah and Jude are inseparable until misunderstandings, jealousies, and a major loss rip them apart.... Nelson’s novel brims with emotion (grief, longing, and love in particular) as Noah, Jude, and the broken individuals in their lives find ways to heal ( 14–up ). Publishers Weekly ( Starred review .) ( Gr 9 Up ) Resplendent.... Readers will forgive convenient coincidences because of the characters' in-depth development and the swoon-worthy romances. The novel's evocative exploration of sexuality, grief, and sibling relationships will ring true with teens. — Shelley Diaz School Library Journal An intricate and absorbing work of art emerges from the details of the interlaced sections. Few novels about twins capture so well the rewards and challenges...or the way in which people who have loved us remain in our minds after their deaths. VOYA ( Starred review .) In an electric style evoking the highly visual imaginations of the young narrators, Nelson captures the fraught, antagonistic, yet deeply loving relationship Jude and Noah share. Booklist The novel is structurally brilliant, moving back and forth across timelines to reveal each teen's respective exhilaration and anguish.... Nelson's prose scintillates... dizzyingly visual.... Here's a narrative experience readers won't soon forget. Kirkus Reviews

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I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson – review

‘The book is filled with metaphors to add an edge, and to make an impact on the reader’

I need to apologise for the fact that I was sent this book months ago to read, but a flurry of books and deadlines also came my way in the post shortly afterward, and it was only recently I saw it at the bottom of my pile and realised it might have been time to read it! Also, I insisted upon reading The Sky Is Everywhere before I read this, which I did and I did review it for the site too, but this review is long overdue.

Noah and Jude are twins. And their grandmother just died. At the time that their family is falling apart, both Noah and Jude meet boys. Attractive boys. Boys that they can’t have, and they know they can’t. The two don’t speak for years, until they both meet these boys, and they don’t realise that they are both in possession of half of their story. If they could reunite, they’d piece together the story at last, and find out the truth about their family.

I tweeted the Guardian Children’s Books Team just one chapter into this book, and said this:

Trying to read @jandynelson is hard. I've only finished the first chapter and I already feel like crying. Amazing book. @GdnChildrensBks — Joshua A.P (@thurrockjosh) July 2, 2015

From that, I think it’s pretty obvious what I thought of this book.

I think that, first of all, we don’t credit the people behind the art and design of books enough. It’s often something that’s overlooked, and so I’d like to say thanks to the designer of this book. With some books, it’s not that big of a deal, but many different pages have a different art-form to them that’s really added a huge amount of value to the book, so thank you to the designer for that!

The story is told in rather long chapters with a dual narrative: Noah’s perspective and Jude’s perspective. I usually hate dual narratives in books, but with I’ll Give You The Sun I loved it, and would not have changed it at all. The two sides of the story present you, the reader, with two complete different opinions and sides of the case, and give you the edge of understanding what happens with one character and not the other.

This book is incredible because of the fact it’s so unique. Never before have I seen a story that comes anywhere close to what Jandy has given us here.

It’s not just the uniqueness of the story that makes it though: it’s also the way it’s told. Read this book and it will be apparent to you how metaphorical it is. The book is filled with metaphors to add an edge, and to make an impact on the reader, and I think it definitely did that. The way the story was told was absolutely fantastic.

That said, I don’t believe that any book will ever get past me without being scraped even a little bit.

I took a while to read this book (and not before I found it sitting lonely at the bottom of my pile!) because I found it really heavy to read. I found myself comparing it to Sentinel by Joshua Winning where the typeface was really heavy. But just like Sentinel, I don’t believe the typeface had too big of an impact on what I thought of the overall story.

My bigger issue is this: I’ll Give You The Sun is incredibly similar to The Sky Is Everywhere. The tragedy, the romance, the romance blossoming in amongst the romance, it’s very similar. The story in I’ll Give You The Sun is unique in itself, but the concept of the idea is not. We’ve seen these themes in previous Jandy Nelson stories, and I don’t know whether Jandy has just recycled the basic theme and manipulated it a lot to make this story original enough to disguise it.

Whether or not they were Jandy’s intentions, I really think that if you have not read this book, you need to go read it now. I love Jandy Nelson as an author even more now, and I think that if you haven’t tried her books, you are certainly missing out on something spectacular.

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I'll Give You the Sun

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Excerpted from "I'll Give You the Sun" by . Copyright © 2015 Jandy Nelson. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Young Readers Group. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

What People are Saying About This

Praise for  The Sky is Everywhere : "Nelson's first novel is tender, romantic, and loaded with passion."— The Horn Book "The author brilliantly navigates Lennie's course between despair and hope, sorrow and humor... a gripping love triangle."— Shelf Awareness "In this amazing tale of love and loss, Nelson introduces a cast of characters who make the reader laugh and cry."—NPR's The Roundtable "Nearly everyone who's staggering through life in the wake of a loved one's death will recognize themselves in this brilliant, piercing story."— The Denver Post • "This is distinguished by the dreamy California setting and poetic images that will draw readers into Lennie's world..."— Publishers Weekly , starred review "A joy to read. You'll remember [it] long after you've turned the last page."— The Romantic Times • "It's romantic without being gooey and tear-jerking without being campy—what more could a reader want?"— BCCB , starred review • "This is a passionate, vulnerable, wonderfully complete and irresistible book."— VOYA , starred review "[Nelson] writes with abandon... it's a headlong kind of book, preferably devoured at a single setting."— Los Angeles Times "Brimming with humor and life, full of music and the poems Lennie drops all over town, The Sky is Everywhere explores betrayal and forgiveness through a vibrant cast of characters."— SLJ "Those who think young adult books can't be as literary, rich, and mature as their adult counterparts will be disabused of that notion after reading The Sky is Everywhere ... A finely-drawn portrait of grief and first love."— The Daily Beast "A story of love, loss, and healing that will resonate with readers long after they've finished reading."— Booklist "A story about love and loss... both heartfelt and literary."— Kirkus Reviews " Sky  is both a profound meditation on loss and grieving and an exhilarating and very sexy romance. The book deserves multiple readings simply to savor Nelson's luscious language..."—NPR (chosen by Gayle Forman as one of the top five teen reads of 2010) "How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic, and warm-blooded novel."— The Guardian "An addictive, romantic, heartbreaking, and wise tale of one girl's epic loss—and equally epic self-discovery. Seriously, stop reading this blurb; start reading this book!"— Gayle Forman , author of the New York Times Bestseller If I Stay "Wow. I sobbed my eyes out and then laughed through the tears. I have not fallen in love with a story and its characters like this in a long time. Stunning, heartbreaking, hilarious. A story that shakes the earth."—An Na, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award and National Book Award Finalist "Okay, I admit it. I have a huge crush on this book—it's beautiful, brilliant, passionate, funny, sexy, and deep. Come to think of it, I might even want to marry this book."—Sonya Sones, author of What My Mother Doesn't Know "Full of heart, quirky charm, and beautiful writing, The Sky Is Everywhere simply shines."—Deb Caletti, National Book Award Finalist and author of The Secret Life of Prince Charming "Jandy Nelson's story of grief somehow manages to be an enchantment, a celebration, a romance—without forsaking the rock-hard truths of loss."—Sara Zarr, National Book Award Finalist and author of Story of a Girl and Sweethearts " The Sky Is Everywhere evokes the intensity of desire and agony of heartache with breathtaking clarity. This beautifully written story will leave an indelible impression upon your soul."—Susane Colasanti, author of When It Happens A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Title A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Nominee A Junior Library Guild Selection Translated into seventeen different languages

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It’s a phenomenal thing that some of the biggest titles of the last couple of years have been LGBTQ, from Scott Westerfeld’s Afterworlds, to Nina LaCour’s Everything Leads to You, to Andrew Smith’s Printz Honor–winning Grasshopper Jungle, to Jandy Nelson’s Printz Award–winning I’ll Give You the Sun—not to mention some of this year’s most highly lauded […]

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