Review: I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson

I'll Give You the Sun
Jandy Nelson
Series: N/A
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Publisher: Dial Books
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Goodreads

The cover I posted here is the one on the physical book I read, and I really loved it. The quote honestly represents so much of what the book is about and I like it a lot.

This book is about Jude and Noah, who are twins. Noah's chapters are written age 13-14, and Jude's are written at age 16. They alternate, but still somehow manage to tell a cohesive story. The PoVs talk about two really important times in both of their lives, with the Jude passages showing reflection on the past and the Noah passages foreshadowing the future. The plot details NoahandJude (how they often refer to themselves in the book) breaking into Noah and Jude. A lot of family angst with their parents and between themselves occurs and attempts to be resolved.

The best thing about this book is probably the incredibly unique way it was written: I've seen books with alternating PoVs before but never detailing different periods in life. If the book wasn't written this way genuinely it would've been a 3 star book at best. It was just such a cool way to tell the story and if for nothing else, I'd suggest reading the book to experience that.

The book was really metaphorical, with lots of italicized /meaningful/ quotes from the twins' mother and grandmother all through out the book. When I was first beginning to read the story I thought it was psuedo deep  and distracted from the plot, but then I realized the metaphorical nature of it all was the plot.

So the story focuses on the twins, who are both artists. When they're 13-14, Noah is weird and Jude is normal by all standards, their parents are fighting, Noah is an artist and they are NoahandJude. At age 16, they are Noah and Jude, with Noah being normal, Jude being the weird one, their dad bonding with Noah and their mother's ghost hanging around, and Jude is the artist. The book unravels what it is exactly that went wrong in their childhood that everything ended up so twisted, and points to choices that each character made that would you wouldn't necessarily expect. The characters are written so well, each with a specific backstory and flaws and love that they don't outwardly show. Every single character, in my opinion, is written in a way that builds the plot and adds to the value of the story.

The only reason I didn't give this book a 5/5 is because the middle parts of the book were a little dry -- it took me more than one session of reading to finish it and usually I'm not a fan of taking breaks right in the middle of stories. This book was so unique though, both with how the characters were built and the actual set up of the narrative -- highly recommend.

- Amrutha

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