Summary (from
Goodreads):
Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are
incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in
love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and
wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years
later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the
twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken,
beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in
her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's.
What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if
they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to
remake their world.
This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning
author of The Sky Is Everywhere will
leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.
Review:
As I said on Goodreads earlier, sometimes
you finish a book, and it's so good, and you feel so strongly connected with
the characters that even when you know it's over, you can't quite let the book
go. This is one of those books. It's the kind you finish, and then clutch to
your chest in a book hug. This author got so many things right. Things about
siblings, and families, and love, and grief, and hate, and art.
I knew right away that this book was different. The writing
style was beautiful. I can see some people not getting it and loving it. It’s
layered upon layered in metaphor. And I don’t always love so much metaphor, but
in this case, it just flowed. It was natural. The writing style was both
natural, yet also exaggerated. And that just worked perfectly with the story
that was also both of those things.
I’m so glad I read this one when I did. I needed it this week. I did. And I’m
so glad I didn’t read it earlier to its release date when my own grief might
not have mixed well with the grief going on here. There is so much loss in this
book. There’s pain and then there’s pain that makes you cut through stone over
night like a stone-cutting ninja sculptor warrior. So many tough things happen.
There’s loss, depression, lying, cheating, affairs, and so much darkness and
drama.
But there’s also this great, sarcastic sense of humor
throughout everything too. There’s always a disease to think about to distract
oneself from charming, leaning British artists. And there’s animal facts and
stargazing, and first love too. There is some steamy romance in here (both
between Jude and her leading man, and between Noah and his), mixing with the
heart-wrenching break-ups and realizations. It was also a twin story, and I
can’t get enough of those.
I’ve never read a YA book that discusses art like this one
does. Between the painting, the street art, the drawings, the museums, the
sculpting, and the stonework, I don’t think I’ve ever had such a great sense of
image from a book before. The artwork was leaking off the pages. I was seeing
it all, and I wanted to see more.
Also important, is the romance isn’t just of the
heterosexual variety. I thought Noah and Brian’s relationship was both usually
more interesting than Jude and Oscar’s, and more sizzling. It was the slow
building variety. And I was shipping them for so long! I was shipping Oscar and
Jude too…just actually not quite as much.
I feel like I’m not even giving this book enough justice. It
was powerful, strong, and unique. It’s one of my favorites of the year (I think
I did vote for it on Goodreads as my favorite of the year) I give it a 10/10.
Go read it.
