I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

A brilliant, luminous story of first love, family, loss, and betrayal for fans of John Green, David Levithan, and Rainbow Rowell

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.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Would not have finished if it wasn't on the BOB list. The trying was so hard here: too precious, secondary characters were bad cliches, the main characters acted like assholes with no real redemption arc other than apologies years later, and the worst offender, “gay” is used as a personality trait. Have heard her first book is better, but I'm disinclined to try it after this.

I wanted to finish this book on September 17th and accomplished the feat with only 1 minute to spare. Given that, it is now past midnight and I am half asleep, so trying to collect all my thoughts about this book is near impossible.

I'll Give You The Sun was a beautiful, unique,, artistic story about two twins and what happened between them to tear their relationship apart, and it was probably one of the best contemporary books I have read this year (so far). However, I did have some problems with this book such as the length of the chapters between Jude & Noah's parts, making it difficult to remember what happened during the last episode of Jude ot Noah

This is the most beautifully written book I have read in a while.

Wow. This book is beautiful. Absolutely loved it.

Full review:

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked up I'll Give You the Sun. I knew the basics: dual POV, everyone seems to love it, LGBTQIA+ themes, and then it went ahead and won the Printz a few days after I started reading, so I knew chances that I was going to like it were high.

But wow, you guys. I really really loved this one.

I'm not an externally emotional reader. I mean, I obviously have feels like everyone else, but I've yet to read a book that made me cry, as I've confessed here before, and I'm usually pretty good about keeping a stoic exterior while reading. But I'll Give You the Sun put me on the brink of tears several times, which is ridiculously rare for me, and I just loved Noah and Jude so much, and the writing!

The writing. I think Nelson's prose is one of those love/hate varieties, but I definitely fell on the love side. Both Noah and Jude's voices were a little out there with some of the imagery and analogies, but I felt like I really got it, and it totally made sense to me with their very artsy personalities, and it just felt so fresh, and wonderful, and fit the tone of the book beautifully.

Noah and Jude aren't perfect. They both make hurtful, cringe-worthy mistakes with big consequences. They're emotional, and young, and full of dreams, and highs, and lows, and I became so very emotionally entangled with their stories.

I often tell people that the best books make you feel something. I'll Give You the Sun didn't make me feel something—it made me feel everything. I loved every page, and Nelson's got herself a new fan for sure.