Thursday, December 30, 2010

The Sky is Everywhere

Review Time! By the time you read this I will be a year older, because I was suppose to post this yesterday ON my birthday but it was really hectic since we also moved to a new house yesterday :) Anyway, back to books ( which I didn't get any for my b'day ) I still trying desperately to read all my 2010's in well, 2010. I think I have four more to go before the end of the year which is ... tomorrow.

( 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. But just like their celestial counterparts, they can't collide without the whole wide world exploding

The Short Story ? - Well, I have to say that it turned out better than I thought it would! My friend read this book and pretty much ruined everything so I wasn't planning to read this but then I won a copy and it's was just tragically calling my name and I just had to Pick.It.Up.

The Long Story ? - I don't read, no, I don't enjoy reading books with the themes Death and Depression. I don't enjoy book with punchlines like " My path the healing my broken heart after my loved one died" or " I don't think I will ever be happy because such and such died". I read alot of contemporary but I usually avoid the death and depression ones. Which, my readers, is why I didn't really want to read - The Sky is Everywhere.

The 100 pages of The Sky is Everywhere was exactly that. Depressing to read, boring, no action, went around in loops but always ending with self-hating or self- pity. However, I've read so many good review on this debut and I pretty sure not everyone one of them is a pessimist or a sadist with self-esteem, so there must have been something good about the book right ? The writing was comfortable enough, the theme D&D made it seem uncomfortable but really Jandy is a wonderful writer, the characterisation was great but it didn't seem special enough to me.

Enter Joe Fontaine, love-interest, musician and french and the whole book changes. Joe wasn't a catalyst, suddenly it wasn't s hard to read this book because it wasn't depressing anymore. Lennie started to be something human again and it was like the sun broke through the storm clouds. It became something that I could read and more importantly review because it wasn't so depressing.

So when Joe took up  the job as a main character the whole book changed and it was from there that I really started reading the book, feeling connections and emotions between the characters and more importantly understanding why this book has been awarded so many great reviews.

The Sky is Everywhere is truly a remarkable book, the title itself has alot of depth to it but to see the changes is a character's personality, the journey from D&D to Hope and Love is really quite memorable. Joe was a catalyst to the book and more importantly he was pretty cute :) Although I got off to a rough start with this book, I ended up loving the ending. Rating 4/5

Badass Bookie xx

3 comments:

  1. I haven't red The Sky is Everywhere yet but for a while there, I thought your rating for this one wouldn't be so high. It's good to see though that you really ended up liking it.

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  2. @ACanadianGirl I was going to give it a three but it really deserves more than that and with a great cover I rounded it up to a four. Technically speaking it's really a 3.75 but ...

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