About Jandy Nelson
Jandy Nelson is a renowned American author of young adult (YA) fiction, best known for crafting emotionally intense stories with vivid, poetic language. Her work often centers on themes of art, grief, identity, and the complex bonds of sibling love. She earned international acclaim and numerous awards for her 2014 novel, I’ll Give You the Sun, which narrates the story of artistic twins, Jude and Noah, whose lives are chronicled through alternating timelines and perspectives. Before achieving literary success, Nelson studied at Cornell University and the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for many years in the publishing industry.
Nelson’s debut novel, The Sky Is Everywhere (2010), was also highly praised and later adapted into a film by Apple TV+. Her writing style is distinct for its lyrical quality and use of magical realism, where intense feelings and colors often leap off the page and personify the characters’ inner worlds. She has a talent for capturing the raw, complicated emotional landscapes of teenagers, leading to her books consistently topping bestseller lists and being regarded as influential staples in contemporary young adult literature.
plot of I’ll Give You the Sun
I can certainly write it again and make the content significantly longer while strictly adhering to all your complex constraints! I will maximize the density of the existing content within the 20-paragraph limit, ensuring each paragraph remains concise (2 to 3 lines maximum) and every single keyword is used and bolded.
I’ll Give You the Sun Review: Art, Love, and Broken Twins
This contemporary YA novel, I’ll Give You the Sun, is an important story for many reasons. I was so glad I read this book, which was recommended and gifted to me by a trusted friend, and let me tell you, she was right.
Although I’m getting to this one a little late I’ll Give You the Sun was on my TBR last month, not to mention that it’s been 3 years since its publication I have absolutely no complaints about the genre. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Jandy Nelson’s latest work.
This is a story about coping with grief and betrayal and simple unfairness. It presents those aspects directly before showing how the characters endeavor to find their way through the darkness.
I wouldn’t call this a sad book because its ending and many messages are positive ones, but this book is nevertheless sad all the way through. It isn’t the sort of book that makes me cry, but it definitely has a lot of sorrowful tension at heart.
The Sun and the Moon: The Broken World of the Crocker Twins
The novel is centered on the twins, Noah and Jude, who don’t look much alike but always have a lot of love for each other, and sometimes share a close relationship. They’re thrust into life and love with the untimely death of their mother and problems in other relationships.
The twins retreat into themselves with very different results outwardly. They mostly stop speaking to each other when admissions into art school reveal that one of them has been accepted and the other has not.
In the two years that follow, one of them tries to embrace their artistic side and the other tries to abandon theirs. They completely stop looking for boyfriends due to hurt they’ve been through in the past.
Noah’s refusal to admit to anyone that he’s gay is really the only hindrance he needs to prevent finding someone he can be happy with. Jude’s boy boycott doesn’t stop her meeting someone irresistible, though, someone with an odd connection to her family’s history.
Fate, however, is conspiring to bring together all the important people in their lives in a way that pushes Noah and Jude back together. The only question left is to wonder whether admitting their secrets at long last will reunite the family or force it permanently apart.
I found the convergence of the four main characters in this novel very coincidental. The thing about coincidence is that when it crops up in real life, it seems incredible and magical, but in books, it feels like cheating.
It makes me skeptical and makes the plot feel cheap, like the author’s pulling strings to bring all the important people together at just the right moment. It makes the story predictable.
My least favorite part of this book, though, was that the whole conflict arises from people keeping secrets from each other for no real reason other than that they’re uncomfortable telling the truth.
The worst part is that the only thing holding them back is believing that telling the truth will make things miserable, when everyone is already completely miserable. There’s nothing to lose.
If Noah and Jude had been honest with each other from the beginning, this story wouldn’t exist. They would have been saved literally years of misery and isolation.
The big reveal at the end, the climax of secret sharing, could’ve happened at any other point in the story, and the main tension would’ve just floated away. That makes the tension feel cheap.
And yet, I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. I liked Noah almost immediately; his sections felt like the written version of how a graphic novel would look.
Noah is so vivid and visual that way, overlaying his imagination over the real world, with thought bubbles and cute cartoon–y images of bullies growing twenty feet tall. Jude, with all her darkness and invisibility, made a nice contrast.
The most compelling thing was seeing how these twins could be so close even though they were competing for love and attention. It really emphasized that parents don’t always know what they’re doing, or what’s best.
These parents are trying, and yet we see that even our elders are fallible and we have to forgive them; they’re only human, just like their kids are only human. The emotions of this book definitely hit their mark.
I never quite came around to liking Jude and didn’t like her insta–love, although I did like the character she fell in love with. She’s constantly thinking “this boy is bad news” but makes no effort to stay away from him.
For all of Jude’s and her mother’s claims that she’s the strong one of the twins, she changes her mind and gives in to things quite easily. It sometimes takes her years to own up to things.
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book, which deals with teenage romance, death, art, creativity, and, significantly, depression and sexuality. It explores all of the big questions young adults want to ask.
I am hesitant to read Nelson’s other book, The Sky is Everywhere. I’m afraid I’ll have issues with the tactics of the writing again, or that it’s about a simple love triangle. Help!
