✴ ✴. 5
OKay, lets begin.
When I first got this book, I believe it was on my birthday (I did a birthday post on this blog as well, which I will shamelessly link here). My friend Tess...I feel like I mention Tess is every other blog post but the thing is SHE IS ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS and we love each other and she reads lots of books, like me probably more than me. We were in a bookstore and I saw this book and it was the hardback version but at a really cheap price for hardbacks where I'm from. Hardbacks are so expensive here but this was so cheap I was actually shocked. It was just this one book. There wasn't a second or third, just this one. I asked Tess whether it was good and she said it was so I just ended up getting it. I was really happy (~imagine me being happy here~). So I got this book on my birthday.
I'll Give You The Sun, is a young adult, standalone, contemporary, coming of age novel by Jandy Nelson. This novel is based with a first person perspective with two pint of views - Jude and Noah- This is the goodreads synopsis:
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.
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.
When I first started it, probably a few weeks ago at the end of Octoberish, I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. SO MUCH! It was the writing style I despised. I know this is a recurring theme with a lot of other people who have read the book so it's not just me. HOWEVER, once I started to get like 50+ and 100+ pages into it, I started to work around the writing style and it got better. Not just that, but the actual plot (if you will) also got better and more intriguing. One night, I kid you not, I literally couldn't put the book down. It's kind of a sad book. It laments quite a bit. But it's a really lovely coming to age novel.
Another thing I really liked was probably the only realistic and genuine part of this book were the relationships between characters, romantically and platonically. The relationship with their parents was so interesting to read as well as the relationship with their friends. This is an LGBT+ book as those themes are present in this novel. This is my first LGBT+ book ever... WOW. I know right! What took me so long. I really loved that romance in this. It wasn't cliche or sexualised so much. It was mushy, cute, simple and I adored it. There is also heterosexual relationships, it's not all LGBT+. HOWEVER, I would like to stress that there is homophobic themes discussed in this book, if that triggers any of you, please don't read this. Your mental health and state is better than reading this book.
Now to talk about everything I disliked....
Another thing I really liked was probably the only realistic and genuine part of this book were the relationships between characters, romantically and platonically. The relationship with their parents was so interesting to read as well as the relationship with their friends. This is an LGBT+ book as those themes are present in this novel. This is my first LGBT+ book ever... WOW. I know right! What took me so long. I really loved that romance in this. It wasn't cliche or sexualised so much. It was mushy, cute, simple and I adored it. There is also heterosexual relationships, it's not all LGBT+. HOWEVER, I would like to stress that there is homophobic themes discussed in this book, if that triggers any of you, please don't read this. Your mental health and state is better than reading this book.
Now to talk about everything I disliked....
Firstly, I did really like the characters in the book, although I thought they were just crafted too ~indie~ like. I just felt like they were just so.....I don't know....made to be so hipsterish and I really don't know how to explain this. It just felt artificial to me. The characters themselves were iffy. I loved Noah but I just liked Jude. They are twins but totally different people. I really liked some parts of the novel and some parts less. I didn't hate a particular scene or anything but this book was just eh.
In addition, there isn't a legit plot line. It's a contemporary coming to age story, so it's more of just lessons learnt and the growth of these characters. The concept of this book was good, I liked that cause everything really linked and fell together towards the end. Another thing I want to address, is that the POV's are like at different ages of Noah and Jude and I barley remembered how old they were cause it felt like they were doing so much at the age of 15? Which was weird for me. I mentioned before that I hated the writing style, and I feel strongly about that. Jandy Nelson is just not for me. Some people may think it's literary genius or whatever, but I despised it. There were times in the book I got hooked to a certain POV and I loved that but then it would go away and I'd find myself just skim reading. .
That brings me to my next point of issue: I hate skim reading. That's how you know it's bad. My English teacher actually said to our class a few week ago, that she would like to see us reading different genres of books such as: Ishiguro, Hosseini, Murakami, biographies, classics and basically not your typical teenage Y/A genre so that our sense of syntax, diction and overall language could broaden. She also mentioned that we didn't have to finish the book if we found it hard, just to read a few pages because sometimes that is all you need. I hate not finishing a book and just leaving it. Even if I hate it I have to finish it. No idea why I do this, it's just become my thing but I think I will start more of that in 2016. Life it too short to read shitty books.
You have to understand how disappointed I was because I made this up to be such some great panache; when I then got into it and the possibility of it being absolute shit got surreal. Although, I did get really emotionally invested with Noah's POV everything else was a blur (probably due to the fact I skimmed most of the book).
Would I recommend this...I don't know. I wouldn't take just my review into account. Read others peoples reviews and maybe check the book out yourself if you're a bit off on whether you want to read this or not. I think I may just be the minority with this one.
Sorry for the extremely long sabbatical hiatus. I've been dying doing IB. I know it's been so long! Going through a break-up so that's also very hard to deal with. I'm really devastated that I cannot read lots and review much, but it's only because I don't have time, or I just really get tired/lazy. Hopefully I'll read over the Christmas holidays but then again I will also be revising for an exam in January. Wish me luck and I truly hope I'll get some reviews out for you all!
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