Book Review: The Sky is Everywhere

My review this week is for The Sky is Everywhere, which I really liked. But warning, I go on a rant about half-way down. Does anyone agree with my rant?

Summary from Goodreads: Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker, bookworm and band geek, plays second clarinet and spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to center stage of her own life—and, despite her nonexistent history with boys, suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two. Toby was Bailey’s boyfriend; his grief mirrors Lennie’s own. Joe is the new boy in
town, a transplant from Paris whose nearly magical grin is matched only by his musical talent. For Lennie, they’re the sun and the moon; one boy takes her out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it.

My Review of The Sky is Everywhere

The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book overall. In the simplest terms, this is the story about a girl and her family dealing with the death of her sister. There were a few issues (rants below) but generally the way that the relationships and the grief was portrayed was touching, realistic, and honest. The relationship between Lennie and her sister- spot on. It's just how I feel about my sister, and how I felt in high school in particular. And the grief that Lennie feels at losing her sister and the way she responds doesn't read like some textbook on grief, but rather something real and genuine.

On top of that, I loved some of the passages, like this one:

"The tequila makes me feel like I'm melting, I want to, want to disappear. I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but the wind."

Or:

"I try to fend off the oceanic sadness, but I can't. It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was."

Okay, so now I get to rant. Why do so many YA main characters read and idolize "Wuthering Heights"? What teenage girl in the history of teenage girls has ever read "Wuthering Heights" 23 times? As a student who loved reading myself, let me tell you, in my free time in high school I was not re-reading books assigned in AP Lit. I might have appreciated them, but I was not going to re-read them obsessively like Harry Potter. This is not the first YA novel that has placed this particular book in the gripped hands of its lead character, but I pray it will be the last. I had to read Wuthering Heights in high school- it's a mopey, depressing book. Can we please break away from "Wuthering Heights"? Have a super smart character that likes, maybe, YA books (I'm guessing a large percentage of people reading YA have not particularly enjoyed Wuthering Heights themselves)? Sigh. Okay, rant over.

At any rate, that rant could be applied to many books out there, so let me conclude on a positive note. This book will make you cry. It will make you think about what it means to be really alive, and to not take things for granted. I certainly recommend it.

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