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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Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
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