The Sky is Everywhere tells the story of Lennie and her family who have been ripped apart by grief at the death of Lennie’s vibrant older sister, Bailey. Bailey died of sudden heart failure before the opening of the book and the story deals with how Lennie deals with the huge hole left by her loss.
The book started kind of slowly with Lennie in a nasty juxtaposition where she refused to move on or change anything, but also refused to acknowledge her loss. The pace picked up with Joe’s (aah...Joe) introduction and then it started to rocket along.
The characters were so well-drawn, I was totally sucked into their lives. Lennie, her grandma, Big, Joe and even Bailey, who really only exists as people’s memories, it was almost like they were walking off the page.
And there’s the love story. Aah, the lovely, lovely love story between Lennie and Joe. He literally exists as a series of binary code on my Kindle, but I’m totally crushing on him.
*Spoiler Alert* Okay, so part of the tension in the story is caused by a love triangle. Cue me going all squinty-eyed because generally speaking, I’m no fan of love triangles. Lennie and Toby (Bailey’s boyfriend), in their grief, can’t help but keep snogging the faces off each other. Obviously, when the kissing is all done, they feel horror-struck and remorse-ridden, but it doesn’t stop them from keeping on doing it. And Lennie’s all, ‘Oh no, I keep accidentally sucking face with Bailey’s boyfriend. I’m so bad.’ And then the next day she just does it all over again.
And I’m reading this, going, ‘Dude, if you want to stop kissing your dead sister’s boyfriend, then STOP KISSING YOUR DEAD SISTER’S BOYFRIEND.’
I did forgive her, though, because grief does weird things to people.
Okay, so a rating. Arrggh! A ten. When you keep turning round to the person next to you and saying, ‘This book!’, it’s got to be a ten.
10/10