The Sky Is Everywhere

by Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson's beloved, critically adored debut is now an Apple TV+ and A24 original film starring Jason Segel, Cherry Jones, Grace Kaufman, and Jacques Colimon.

“Both a profound meditation on loss and grieving and an exhilarating and very sexy romance." —NPR

Adrift after her sister Bailey’s sudden death, Lennie finds herself torn between quiet, seductive Toby—Bailey’s boyfriend who shares Lennie’s grief—and Joe, the new boy in town who bursts with life and musical genius. Each offers Lennie something she desperately needs. One boy helps her remember. The other lets her forget. And she knows if the two of them collide, her whole world will explode.
 
As much a laugh-out-loud celebration of love as a nuanced and poignant portrait of loss, Len­nie’s struggle to sort her own melody out out the noise around her makes for an always honest, often uproarious, and absolutely unforgettable read.

• ISBN10: 0142417807
• ISBN13: 9780142417805
• Publish Date: 22 March 2011 (first published 1 March 2010)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Dial Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780142417805

Reviews

[jeannamichel]

I didn’t know what this was about before going in. Knowing now, I probably would have never picked it up. I haven’t read anything by Nelson before and I don’t think I’ll be reading anything by her again. I understand the examination of grief in this and can appreciate the flowery writing but the book just wasn’t for me.

[Sam@WLABB]

This book, like I'll Give You the Sun, showcases Nelson's beautiful writing. Jandy Nelson has a gift for painting a gorgeous story full of emotion with her words. The Sky is Everywhere is Lennie's story. She is drowning in the aftermath of her sister's sudden death. Lennie adored her older sister, and is lost without her; not sure who she is now that her sister is gone.

In photographs of us together, she is always looking at the camera, and I am always looking at her.

I loved so much about this book: the feels, the beautiful writing, Joeliriousness!!!, the pain, the joy. There are sad parts in this book. It is about a girl working through her grief, but it's also about her growing and discovering new things about herself. There were times when I was grinning so widely, that my face hurt. The romance is so sweet and tender. I was swept up in the "Joeliriousness" of it all. I also really liked the family - Gram, Big, and Lennie were an interesting bunch. All were struggling with Bailey's death, each was dealing with it in their own way, but they needed each other to really heal.

Another wonderful book from Nelson, which filled my heart with pain and joy.

[whisperingchapters]

I couldn't deal with this book. Lennie is so selfish and self-centered especially when she did something various of times she cheated a couple of times that she shouldn't have and that is a trope I hate with a passion. I should have DNF'd this.

[Bianca]

People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don’t believe time heals. I don’t want it to. If I heal, doesn’t that mean I’ve accepted the world without her?

[Jyc]

★★★★ // a good contemporary piece on the dysfunctionalities of families; how we all have different ways to confront grief. mixes personal faith and religious belief in an interesting manner. also, it did a pretty good job to resolve the central conflict.

[Kelly]

This is by far my favourite book that I've read, not only this year, but of all time. It's a beautifully written and tragic story that I utterly fell in love with. No words could describe how heartwarming this book is. I absolutely adored it.

[lizarodz]

I loved this book. The feelings of pain, despair, and guilt at the lost of a loved one are so beautifully portrait, and easy to undertand. This book is very well written, almost as if it were poetry. It portraits the feelings of falling in love with excuisite detail, in a way that makes you feel like flying, like the sky is really everywhere. I also adored the way that nature, the forest, the river, the sky, seemed like main characters that formed a big part of Lenny's life.

[Jo]

Seventeen-year-old Lennie Walker 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 centre 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, with a nearly magical grin. One boy takes Lennie out of her sorrow, the other comforts her in it. But the two can't collide without Lennie's world exploding... From Amazon UK

I don't know what to say about this book. It's beautiful. It's emotional. It's powerful. It's thought provoking. And it's now right up there with my favourites. I have a lot of favourites, simply because they are exciting or thrilling, but a few that touch me and effect me so deeply, I feel this overwhelming joy at being lucky enough to have read such a wonderful book, that such a treasure has fallen into my hands. The Sky is Everywhere is one of these books.

This book is chock full of emotion. To compare it to a rollercoaster ride, like I would normally do, wouldn't work for this book. It just seems silly to do so in light of the depth of feeling running through this book - it would be like comparing the heat of the sun to a radiator. As weird as this may sound, Lennie's grief over Bailey's death is beautiful; it's sharp, it's overwhelming, it's heavy, and it's endless. Lennie compares it to a building, but I'd compare it to the sea; it washes over her - and you - and drags her down, away from the surface, leaving her unable to breath.

Toby and Joe are her only life lines. What happens between her and each of the boys, how they effect her, her grief, become this confusing, wonderful, painful, disastrous, beautiful, chaotic part
of her life... all I can say is Nelson gets it spot on. It's messy, it's understandable, it's human, it's real.

I love the way Nelson writes. She has this way with words and gives her characters these ideas that made me stop and think, or just marvel. The sky begins at your feet, lonliness is like a day without birds, hearing souls in music. There is a part of this book I wanted to quote but can't as it's an ARC. Lennie was thinking about how everything Bailey knew, heard, learned, saw is now gone, the way and the things she thought. It really spoke to me; there are so many things I think, not important things, just random, silly things or opinions, or whatever, that I've never voiced, simply because the subject hasn't come up, and it made me think that perhaps no-one really knows me, and the need to just garble onn at people to make sure it's out there.

The poems Lennie wrote to deal wih her grief were just genius, and made her really relatable for me. I used to write poems as a teen when things weren't so great, I thought of it as therapy. Although I can't relate to her grief, I could relate Lennie's need to write poetry, and they were just great! Bailey dies before the book starts, and the poems are where we really see her, and Lennie's love just jumps out of them.

I have to mention Sarah, Lennie's best friend. There are a fair few moments of humour throughout the book, it's not all doom and gloom, and Sarah's use of animals instead of swearing are some of them. It's just too cool! I so want to go around saying holy horses, jumping giraffes and call people flying yellow ducks. Too funny.

I loved this book so much, I read it in a day. Seriously, you just have to read The Sky is Everywhere. Don't miss out on the beautiful that is contained in these pages. Don't deny yourself this piece of wonderful. You'll be doing yourself a disservice.

From

[Joni Reads]

I won this book from a contest Gayle Forman, author of If I Stay and Where She Went, a while ago. It's signed by Jandy Nelson, which is incredibly cool. The book had been in my TBR list for a while and I was so excited that I won it. And it was amazing, let me tell you.
For some reason I seem to be drifting towards books where the main character has someone close to them die. Not sure why but I think that this is a storyline that can be done uniquely every time. This book is just tugs on the heart strings as the reader travels with Lennie through the months after her sister has died. She is trying to not fall apart and hold things together and finally she finds someone who she can share her grief with: Toby, her sister's boyfriend. Toby is just as grief-stricken as Lennie is and when she is with him she can just put down the walls she built around everyone else and just be exactly what she is: sad. But when Toby kisses her Lennie is filled with mixed emotions again. She feels as though she has betrayed her sister but st the same time, she isn't feeling anything at all when she is kissing Toby.
And then Lennie meets Joe, a new guy at school who doesn't know her as The Girl Whose Sister Died. With Joe, she has no reminders of her sister and can just go back to living an almost normal life.
The cast of characters of this book was so rich, I loved all of them. Lennie's grandmother was so lovable, I wish she was my grandma. And I wish I had an eccentric Uncle Big like Lennie has. Joe was the perfect guy and Toby was so beautifully heart broken. And then there is, of course, Lennie who has so many emotions she leaves scraps of poetry written on receipts, napkins, etc all over town in an attempt to pour her feelings out onto paper. A great read that I recommend to anyone who loves Contemporary YA.

[Leah]

Lennie Walker has always felt safe in her sister’s shadow; with Bailey there Lennie could float through life without having to worry too much about being the center of attention. So when Bailey dies, the bottom of Lennie’s world falls from underneath her and she suddenly finds herself very much the center of attention and doesn’t know how to deal with it, particularly when it appears that she has two boys to choose from. There’s Toby, but what kind of girl falls for her sister’s boyfriend; her dead sister’s boyfriend, no less? Then there’s Joe, the new boy in town with a grin the size of America. But how can Lennie be falling in love when her sister Bailey isn’t around to witness it? But who is Lennie actually falling in love with? Toby or Joe?

Jandy Nelson’s debut novel only came to my attention a couple of months ago when I saw it being reviewed everywhere after it’s American release. I thought it sounded fantastic and I was pleased to find out that it was going to be published in the UK. I was contacted by one of the ladies who work for Jandy’s UK publishers, Walker, about getting a review copy and I jumped at the chance to be able to get an early copy of the book. It took a little while to arrive and I was eager to get stuck in as soon as possible. I finally finished the book I was reading when The Sky Is Everywhere arrived and got stuck in hoping for a fantastic debut novel.

I knew from reading the blurb of the book that the book dealt, as you can expect if you’ve read the blurb, with death and the aftermath of death and how it affected those left behind. Grief is always a difficult topic to write about and you certainly have to have a certain touch to pull off a book that deals with the aftermath of the death of a loved one. With The Sky Is Everywhere I thought Jandy Nelson did a fantastic job portraying just how confused Lennie was after the death of her sister, and best friend, Bailey. I truly didn’t think the Lennie/Toby strand of the storyline would work; but it really really did. I thought I would find it disgusting and wrong and that it would tarnish Bailey’s memory in some way, but Jandy handled it so well that although it was wrong on a lot of levels, it was also understandable; it made sense.

My absolute favourite favourite favourite (yes I just said favourite three times) part of the book was the blossoming relationship between Lennie and Joe. From that very first meeting, in the first few pages, I loved them together. They seemed to spark off each other so well and I loved that Joe called Lennie John Lennon. Their chemistry was fantastic and they’re almost certainly one of my favourite pair of characters that I’ve read in a long, long time. Of course, with Lennie having to decide between both Toby and Joe there was bound to be some sort of huge part in the middle where it all exploded and let me tell you, it was a good explosion. It was a good way for everything to pour out and boil over and although it was a bit sad, it also meant for a fantastic build up to the end of the book.

I absolutely loved Lennie, right from the off. I’m the kind of person that prefers to stay in the shadows rather than be the center of attention so I could totally understand how much Lennie’s life changes after Bailey’s death. Lennie goes from standing in her sister’s shadow to being the only person there, with no one to stand behind and it was a huge change. She went from being a shy music-geek to fighting off the attentions of two boys. I liked both Toby and Joe but for very different reasons. It was clear that Toby was struggling to come to terms with everything that had happened and although I thought he was a bit full-on at times, I did still manage to understand his feelings. Joe just shone from the page and I couldn’t not love him. Truly, there’s nothing I can say to give Joe the justice he deserves, he was a fantastic character. Two other hugely important characters to the book are Gram, Lennie’s grandmother, as well as Big, Lennie’s Uncle. They’re also fabulous characters and are of huge importance to the book. There’s quite the family atmosphere around Lennie; despite the fact her mother is AWOL and she doesn’t know who her father is but the fact is, Gram and Big – and Bailey, of course – are her family. Surprisingly, although she never makes one appearance, Bailey is also important to the book. Despite the fact she’s dead, she’s alive throughout the book simply by the way in which Lennie relies on her, and the way Lennie keeps her room the same as it was the day she last left it.

The Sky Is Everywhere is a truly fantastic read. Jandy Nelson writes so beautifully that once I managed to sit down and get stuck into the book, I barely wanted to put it down. She writes from Lennie’s point of view incredibly well and Lennie’s voice is just fantastic. Jandy has put a note in the advance copies of the book saying that she herself lost someone important to her around about Lennie’s age so it means she’s able to write grief very very well, as I said. There are a lot of kooky elements to the book all of which add up to make a totally fantastic debut novel. I truly hope Jandy is currently working on her second book, I for one will be snapping it up as soon as it’s physically possible. I hugely recommend The Sky Is Everywhere, it’s a fab read.