I’ll give you the Sun

Author: Jandy Nelson

Genre Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction

Publisher: Dial Books

Year: 2014

Ranking: 4.7/ 5

 

 

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.

The Author

Jandy Nelson is an American writer for children and young adults and a literary agent. She received a BA from Cornell, an MFA from Brown in poetry, and another MFA from Vermont College in writing for children and young adults. She is also a published poet. The Sky Is Everywhere is her first novel. The Sky is everywhere is noted as one of YALSA's 2011 Best Fiction for Young Adults and has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Voices of Youth Advocates. Her second novel, I'll give you The Sun, was published in June 2014.

At the annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Nelson participated in panel discussions. She was on the panel "Young Adult Fiction: Teens and Turmoil" with Gayle Forman, Cynthia Kadohata and moderator Sonya Sones during the 2010 event

Personal Experience with This Book

This book is simply beautiful. One of the best books I've read this year. I think that I cannot stop recommending it and look forward when comes out in Spanish to give to my mom. I would love that she would read it too.

I'll give you the sun is a unique and wonderful story. First we have a story told by two main characters in two completely different times. At first this may confuse some readers, but as the reading progresses you realize how all the parts are united slowly and everything comes to an equilibrium point that you would have never thought.

Then we have the characters, both main and secondary. All characters get that sense of reality. They are so imperfect and human you can feel identified with each of them. Each have their part in the story, each appears from the start but you do not realize, and each of them has a wonderful and so unique development that leaves you speechless. 

• Jude, our first protagonist is a girl who at first shows her rebellious stage. Where she wants to fit in with their friends that stage where what others see of you means the most important. Too bad the lived this experience being pretty young. But that stage certainly makes that Jude we see later at age 16. Mature and though, with many things inside, is a girl who loves her family above all else. In addition to being also is a very special and eccentric girl. 
• Noah meanwhile is more reserved at first. He feels he cannot get to fit in with his sister’s friends or even in his own school. It is an inborn artist and is always painting, whether it is inside his mind or not. Noah has a gigantic change at 16 and you will have to read the book to see what it is.

Last but not least. The author addresses issues within the plot of the book that at first glance may seem too problematic, and if you put them together much worse. But the same poetic style that this woman has when writing does not let you feel overwhelmed by anything that she will present. I loved all subjects performed here and how they  intertwined with each other and how issues like Bullying, the Alcoholism, Homosexuality, depression and family as the center of all this story come together to make it a wonderful one.

It is a book that has romance as well. One of those pure romances that barely exist anymore. One of those romances you wanted to have when you were a teenager and still believed in Prince Charming. But, these romances are not the center of the story; they act as an ornament to the story that gives joy and meaning to all other bad things that happen. You may get laughs and will make you feel tickling in the stomach, I'm sure of that.

I will recommend this book to anyone who wants to read it. Also, rest assured that I have in my next reading another book by this author and I will keep reading everything else thatshe writes.