The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

When I'm impressed by an author, I have a tendency to gather up all of that author's books so that I can read them. This can be a bit of a challenge when I'm catching a writer at the end of their career. In this case, I found Jandy Nelson on her second book, I'll Give You the Sun, because it won a Printz award in 2015. The Sky is Everywhere is her first book. I'm all caught up at this point, at least until she publishes her next book.

Lennon begins the book grieving the loss of her elder sister, Bailey, who dies of a freak fatal arrhythmia. She's 17 and her sister was 19. Both children were abandoned by their mother and are being raised by their grandmother and uncle. Every character in this book is what we used to call flaky when I was a kid. Gram is a master gardener who paints portraits of women only using the color green. Big, the uncle, is a massive Casanova arborist who's been married (and divorced) five times. Bailey was a free-spirited actress diva. Lennon is a master clarinetist who's read Wuthering Heights thirty some odd times. All of them are a little off, but they are all just really nice and sympathetic people.

Everyone's sad and trying to recover, but Lennon and Toby (Bailey's boyfriend) seem to be drowning in their grief. Lennon and Toby get closer due to their shared grief. When Lennon returns for the end of school, she meets the new guy Joe fresh in from Paris. Joe is obviously intrigued by her. Soon Lennon finds herself stuck between these two boys.

There is a heavy romance angle to this one. This book is drowning in hormones. While no actual sex, or really anything approaching sex, happens, there is a lot of very intense kissing and making out. Really. Very intense. However, that's not really what the book is about. This is not a romance novel. Ultimately this is a book about getting through grief and the kinds of mixed up emotions that happen as part of the grief process. Everything that happens between Lennon and Toby makes sense in the context of the novel. If anything, the relationship between her and Joe seems the more off key. That being said, I found the resolution touching and spent the whole last third of the book crying.

Jandy Nelson specializes in making me cry. Both her books have had me sobbing at some point during the read and it's not cheap emotion. She has a knack for creating sympathetic characters who are struggling with situations that most of us can relate to. Result = sob fest.