A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell.

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. (Cover and synopsis from Goodreads.)

Let the Fangirling Commence…

It’s been a while since I fangirled, hasn’t it?  I think it’s been at least since my review of The Search for WondLa, which was back in April.  I mean, not much can come close to the level of fangirling I did for WondLa (my heart will always belong to awesome sci-fi books with fantastic twists), but I definitely loved I’ll Give You the Sun, and it is probably my second favorite read of the year (with The Search for WondLa being #1).

So let’s get to the fangirling shall we?  I haven’t read anything else by Jandy Nelson but if her other books are half as good as this one, I need to read them and own them immediately.  This was one of the first books in a long time where I absolutely adored the main characters.  I like a lot of main characters, sure, but often I find myself really loving the secondary characters even more.  But with I’ll Give You the Sun, Noah and Jude were definitely my favorites.  I loved the descriptions of Noah’s art, and I NEED to see that portrait of Brian.  I also loved Jude’s quirkiness with her grandmother’s “bible” and the ghost of her grandmother!

And this book is just really great at conveying what it feels like to be artistic, or even just different.  It also wonderfully conveys how much people change in those early teen years, and it just beautifully describes all the aspects of being a teenager, from the hormones to the amazing and horrible state that is your first love, from trying to fit in to trying to cope with loss and rejection, from feeling those first moments of freedom and almost-adulthood to navigating the torrential downpour that is responsibility and adulthood.  And also that time when your parents are still your heroes, but you you actually start to see them as human beings, flaws and all.  It’s just beautifully written and speaks on so many levels.

Great Quotes…

Speaking of that beautiful writing, I have to share some of my favorite quotes from I’ll Give You the Sun:*

Disclaimer:  I received this ARC from the publisher, via Book Expo America, in exchange for my honest review.  I was not compensated in any other way for this review.