Review: I'll Give You the Sun

My review of I’ll Give You the Sun, the winner of  2015 Printz award, by Jandy Nelson is below. Those strange noises you hear are nothing to be concerned about…it’s just me crying and dying over this book. 

Summary (from goodreads): 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.

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Thoughts: 

How is it even possible for me to have another book worthy of a re-read? I’ll tell you how, Jandy Nelson decided to write I’ll Give You The Sun. 

Just like Jellicoe Road, I didn’t expect this book to hit me so hard. I didn’t expect to fall in love with this book. I started the book and though I wasn’t confused, it didn’t grab my attention completely. But somehow, the book snuck up behind me and practically consumed me because, once again, I was about 100 pages in and I couldn’t put the book down. (This was an actual problem because I had class at eight in morning after—I almost missed class). 

Past affects the present. Amazing characters and plots. Twins who are willing to do anything and everything. I loved it all. I’m doing my best to keep this spoiler free, people, but it’s so hard. I want to fangirl about everything in this book. 

I once again fell in love with the characters before the plot in this book. At thirteen,  Noah is the person I was when I was in high school (and kinda of even now). Jude was the person I wanted to be. At sixteen, Noah was the person I envied and hated. Jude was the person I wish I was courageous enough to be. 

Ms. Nelson does a perfect job in depicting a brother-sister relationship. I don’t have a twin, but I’m best friends with my younger brother and everything that happened with Jude and Noah—the jealously, the misunderstanding, making each other angry just because they could—I have been through it with my brother.

Then there was their passion for art. Both Noah and Jude are artists and I really connected with that. Now, I’m not an artist—I tried it for a couple of years because my sister was and is really into art—but the passion, devotion, and determination the two twins had. I saw their passion reflected in my own pursuits with writing and that was really cemented my love for the book. 

The plot also helped. I can’t say much without giving everything away, but I’ll put it this way. There’s a reason I loved both I’ll Give You the Sun and Jellicoe Road. There’s a reason I’m willing to read both again. It’s because both books had authors that knew how to tell not just one story, but two. Two stories that are intertwined from root to branch. 

Have you read this amazing book? What did you think? Please tell me you loved it :)