The Sky Is Everywhere

Author: Jandy Nelson

Rating: 2/5

After the death of her sister, Lennie Walker finds that she has to make a decision between two boys: Toby (aka her sister’s fiance) and Joe Fontaine (a guy with REALLY long eyelashes who can speak French).

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

So Lennie’s sister, Bailey, dies and that ruins everything (understandably). Their mother abandoned them when they were little and they live with Gram (who’s six-feet tall and grows plants and flowers). Their Uncle Big lives with them too (he’s had five marriages and keeps on marrying more women). Bailey’s boyfriend, Toby, starts kissing Lennie to get over his grief. Lennie finds that it helps. She learns that Toby and Bailey were engaged and that Bailey was actually pregnant. Bailey was an actress, by the way, and she was nineteen when she died. Lennie feels guilty but she’s just like screw this. Then this new guy comes to her school named Joe Fontaine and he’s a musical prodigy and has really long eyelashes AND he’s very good looking. Lennie is the second chair for clarinet. This girl named Rachel is first chair and Lennie let her win. Lennie’s best friend is Sarah and she’s this hyper person. Anyway, Joe starts coming over to Lennie’s house and brightens up everything. He has a huge crush on Lennie. Then the two have a thing. But Lennie keeps doing things with Toby too. Then Joe finds Lennie kissing Toby and becomes super mad. Then they make up, and Lennie realises that Toby is like a brother. She learns to accept that the grief of her sister’s death will stay with her forever. She realises she’s been super selfish. Oh, and Lennie’s been leaving poems and stuff all around town.

Plot and Pacing: I don’t usually read a lot of YA but I told one of my friends that I’d read whatever she wanted and she gave me this book. (Thanks, Petra.) Okay, a lot of people may hate me for saying this but damn, this book really sucked. I don’t understand how readers on Goodreads think it’s such a deep book. The only part that made me feel bad was the whole Bailey arc but then that got annoying. And I wish Nelson had shown some other bits rather than rambling on and on and on about irrelevant “deep” thoughts. For example, I was really looking forward to Lennie challenging Rachel for first chair but nope, didn’t happen.

The whole romance thing–what?!?!?!?! I get that Joe is insanely good looking but seriously, how do people just fall in love within a day? And both Joe and Lennie insist that they have this deep love for each other but all I can think about is something my English teacher said about the theme of youth in Romeo and Juliet. She said youth was an important theme because Shakespeare wanted to show that younglings don’t really know what love is even if they think they do and that we are only capable of being irrational beings when it comes to love. Joe and Lennie’s relationship felt like that. And Lennie and Toby doing stuff together? Like inappropriate stuff. Holy crap, I wanted to slap both of them. I don’t like people who cheat on others so I really didn’t like Lennie or any of the characters really. So without further ado…

Characters: The only characters I liked were the dogs who only showed up when Toby was around. Dogs are cute. I like dogs. Everyone else, ugh. Sarah though, I could totally understand her reaction to Toby and Lennie being inappropriate. I liked Joe’s eyelashes and the way they were described as always “batting.” I didn’t really like anything else about him. Lennie. Oh gosh, Lennie was so infuriating. I didn’t like the way she thought about things. Also, if I wrote poems and all that, I wouldn’t just drop them at random places because that’s littering. If I didn’t want to keep them, I’d have the courtesy to dump them in the trash.

Writing Style: I think Nelson was fairly successful at capturing the normal, everyday teenager’s voice in her book. I found the descriptions a bit boring and repetitive. The poems were interesting at first but got boring afterwards. I don’t want to spend any more time on this review.

Oh, wait, the only reason I gave this book a 2/5 and not a 1/5 was because of the relationship between Bailey and Lennie. And the dogs. The dogs were nice.