[Review] The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson

Rating: 3.5 stars

Published: March 10th 2010

Goodreads Synopsis:

Adrift after her sister Bailey's sudden death, Lennie finds herself torn between quiet, seductive Toby—Bailey's boyfriend who shares her grief—and Joe, the new boy in town who bursts with life and musical genius. Each offers Lennie something she desperately needs... though she knows if the two of them collide her whole world will explode.
Join Lennie on this heartbreaking and hilarious journey of profound sorrow and mad love, as she makes colossal mistakes and colossal discoveries, as she traipses through band rooms and forest bedrooms and ultimately right into your heart.
As much a celebration of love as a poignant portrait of loss, Lennie's struggle to sort her own melody out of the noise around her is always honest, often uproarious, and absolutely unforgettable.

I read The Sky is Everywhere directly after All the Bright Places, and the subject matter is so similar (protagonist coping with loss of sister), that it's really going to be hard to separate myself from the two and not compare them.

Even though the two are super similar in premise, Lennie is coping with her sister's death in an entirely different way. Even though life was supposed to move on, Lennie isn't, or not in the most expected way. There's no one else who could understand her grief besides Toby, Bailey's boyfriend. And there's now a new kid at school - Joe, who complicates Lennie's feelings further. Lennie was supposed to share the woes of being a teenager with Bailey. But now that Bailey is gone, she's stuck in some kind of limbo, expressing her feelings through poetry, introduced at the beginning of every chapter.


To say that one book dealt with grief better than the other would be saying that coping with grief and loss should be done in exactly the same way. Strange things happen when one grieves.

However, though I thought this was a beautifully written book that addressed an understanding of grief and love, it veered too much in the direction of instalove for my liking. Some of Lennie's decisions were impulsive and selfish, and I wasn't sure what exactly to think of the love triangle with Bailey's boyfriend.

Maybe it was because I felt more profoundly affected by All the Bright Places that I couldn't relate/empathize as much as I wanted to with this book.

In spite of that, Lennie does address the feelings of loneliness and solitude that stem from grief. Even though she's surrounded by so much good, how can it compare when someone so important is gone?

I'm somewhere she can't find, and I don't have the map to give her that leads to me. (26)

I think the next two passages summarize the sentiment of this novel, and how vital it is that Lennie go through her hardships, understanding that life will go on, but that doesn't mean that her love for Bailey will fade in the slightest. Lennie is allowed to feel things, and there's so much feeling in this novel, so much displaced feeling that ends up being a major conflict when it comes to Joe and Toby.

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 does, 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 it mean I've accepted the world without her? (168)

Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living and daring and spirit and joy. (257)