I'll Give You The Sun + My First Audiobook Experience

I'll Give You The Sun: Jandy Nelson

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.

I listened to this book on an audiobook, which was entirely new to me! I've heard many fantastic things about this book so when I saw this at the library I chose to listen to it! To be completely honest, I think if I had read the book instead of listened to it I might have had a different reaction to the book.

"You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles." 

One of the things I liked turned out to be one of the downfalls of the book for me. I thought it was awesome that the age of around 13 was told from Noah's point of view and the age of around 16 was told from Jude's. At the same time, I think these are weird ages to to be having so many sexual encounters. Actually, I can understand 16 - but not 13 at all. Was it just me that thinks it's strange? The entire time I was just thinking:

My favorite character of the book wasn't any of the main characters. Don't get me wrong - I did like the main characters. Noah and Jude were cool. I mostly liked Noah, but I absolutely loved Brian. He was so different and unique, as were all the characters of this book. There was just something about him. He had flaws, he was quirky, cute, and he made mistakes. I just really liked him as a character.

Mostly, I feel the story was beautifully written. I really enjoyed how everything came together at the end and I think Jandy Nelson deserves a lot of praise for this book. I understand without a shadow of a doubt why people love this book so much and why it was optioned for a movie. Like I said, maybe if I read the book instead of listened to it I may have had a different reaction. Unfortunately, it wasn't my favorite book in the world like it was for a lot of people.

"He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down" 

This was my absolute first time listening to an audiobook. I commute to college classes about 45 minutes each way with traffic, so I figured it would be nice to listen to an audiobook. I borrowed my first audiobook from the library mostly because the prices of audiobooks are much more expensive than regular books! At first, I wasn't sure if I wasn't a fan of the audiobook or of the book content. As the book went on, I either liked the book more or was getting more familiar with the audiobook - I'm not sure which. I think that a big part of liking an audiobook will depend on the narrator. The narrators in I'll Give You The Sun weren't bad, but I've heard that some books have really fantastic narrators and I really wouldn't call these fantastic. I returned I'll Give You The Sun today and picked up another audiobook! I didn't listen to the audiobook every time I was in the car because sometimes I was in the mood to listen to music instead. Anyway, I think my first audiobook experience was successful and will keep borrowing them from the library to listen to in the car!

Do you ever listen to audiobooks? Which ones?