Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.
Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun might be the best book I've read this year, and I've read some damn good books in the last ten months.
Within the first ten pages, I knew I was going to love this book. Noah is an incredible character (as is Jude, but the first chapter is from Noah's POV). Alternating POVs can be tricky, but Nelson excels at distinguishing the two characters in this book. The story alternates between the views of twins Noah at age 13 (going on to 14) and Jude at 16. The twins used to be super close but during Noah's time they're beginning to fall apart. By Jude's time, they barely even talk to each other.
I'll Give You the Sun is about trust and love and betrayal and knowing exactly what you want to do with your life and not being able to do it. But ohmygosh is it about love. It's about love in every expression: sibling love and parental love and love when you don't want it and love when you do want it.
I finished I'll Give You the Sun and immediately wanted to pick up any other books Nelson had written. I was excited to see that this wasn't her first novel, but I was also disappointed to see that there was only one other book of hers I could read!
This is a great book for people who like character driven novels. I would consider it contemporary fiction,but I think that even if contemporary fiction isn't usually your jam, you should give it a try.
Favorite Quotes:
"If Mom died, the sun would go out. Period."
"There's a crawlspace in me that no one can get to, no matter what."
"No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin."
"They do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this."
"'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."
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