Tuesday, 7 November 2017
The Sky is Everywhere | Jandy Nelson | Review
Sometimes, you just want a fun, quick read. After reading I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson quite a while ago, I knew she was just the author to provide me with something like that for a recent holiday. Her writing is the ultimate in escapism writing, though it doesn’t shy away from dealing with the difficult topics.
The Sky is Everywhere explores grief and love and everything in between. Lennie Walker’s life is turned upside down when her sister dies at 19. Suddenly, she’s not quite sure what she is meant to be doing, how her life should like and how she feels, beyond the fact that she’s experiencing a pain that is greater than anything she had ever known.
While that summary might not sound like a “fun, quick read”, it really was. Of course, there were moments where my eyes were welling up and I just wanted to reach through the pages and hug Lennie. What happened to these characters was utterly horrible and unimaginable but The Sky is Everywhere is about the aftermath of that. It is about rebuilding a life, and finding ways to feel something other than grief. It’s about Lennie finding a way to carry on without her sister, while honouring and remembering. What results is a book about the messy reality of human emotion and relationships, which is completely endearing. I wanted to consume this book. A big part of why this works is the characters themselves, who are completely relatable, vibrant and vivacious. Lennie’s family are just screaming to be loved by readers and definitely made the book for me.
My favourite part of The Sky is Everywhere had to be the poetry hidden behind the chapters. These were poems that we had read about Lennie writing so getting to actually read them added an excellent layer to the book. It really helped to show her emotional turmoil and made the reading experience so much.. More. It was something that I really loved about this book and a big part of why I’m raving about it so much today!
