Order History
Premium Membership & Rewards
Help Center / FAQ
5 Books to Read after Falling for I’ll Give You the Sun
Today Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun became 2015’s Printz Award winner. Nelson’s gorgeous sophomore novel is about twins Jude and Noah, once as close as could be. She’s a fearless surfer girl, he’s a passionate artist who sees in Technicolor—and is falling helplessly in love with the boy next door. But their mother’s sudden death, and the events that precede it, rip them apart, leaving Jude a shuttered shell of herself and Noah in denial of both his sexuality and his art. Three years later, a new mentor and a damaged boy enter Jude’s life, blowing open her creativity and loosening the latches on her self-hatred—and leading, circuitously, to Noah finding his way back to who he really is. The book is infused with so much beauty and such a lust for life, in all its turmoil and pain, that you may just find yourself inspired to climb the nearest mountain.
When you come back down, you’ll want to know what to read next. Here are five places for I’ll Give You the Sun fans to start:
If you loved the central brother-sister relationship, read The Darkest Part of the Forest, by Holly Black
As with Jude and Noah, years of love, sacrifice, and entwined desires lead Hazel and Ben to an (albeit less intense) impasse in adolescence, as their innate childhood connection comes under strain. Their relationship is the human heart of Black’s supernatural tale, about a beautiful prince sleeping in a glass coffin, a human town clinging to the edge of a dangerous faerie wood, and the dark deal Hazel makes in a bid to secure her brother’s happiness.
If you loved the look at an artist’s process, read Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future, by A.S. King
Glory lost her photographer mother to suicide, and the wound has never lost its rawness. But when she discovers her mother’s hidden notebook, it helps illuminate her own relationship with image-taking, life, and art. Glory’s path toward accepting her mother’s death and figuring out how to live her own life is married to a supernatural, mind-bending story of epic proportions. After drinking the wrong substance, she becomes subject to dark visions, outlining the frightening shape of a future America through the fates of the people (and their ancestors) she comes in contact with. The book is bleak yet hopeful, dark yet radiant. It might be the most exciting King novel yet.
Ships in 1-2 days.
If you just want more of Nelson’s gorgeous prose, read The Sky Is Everywhere
Go back to the source with Nelson’s debut, so gorgeously sensory and verging on the magical realistic it makes you feel like you have synesthesia. Lennon has just lost her gifted older sister to an undiagnosed heart problem, and the start of her grief coincides with her sexual awakening. As she mourns, she also falls in love, with two boys who serve very different purposes in her life. In the slow process of healing, she writes poems of pain and hides them all over time—and slowly makes her way back to her music, learning to live without guilt even in her sister’s absence.
Ships in 1-2 days.
If you loved the deeply romantic love stories, read Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz
In concise yet poetic prose, Saenz traces the arc of Aristotle and Dante’s connection, as it grows from new friendship into something more. To become who he really is, both with Dante and on his own, introverted Ari has to overcome a stultifying family life and his own expectations for himself. He risks life and limb for outgoing, bighearted Dante, and braves a journey of self-discovery that is mesmerizing, wildly satisfying, and utterly assured. This book will make your heart will grow three sizes.
If you loved its lush lyricism, read The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender, by Leslye Walton
This debut opens with the highly eccentric family history of Ava Lavender, a girl destined to live a lonely (and strange, and beautiful) life after she’s born with an unexplained abnormality: a pair of wings. Treated as an angel by some, as an abomination by others, Ava traces her origins from her great-grandparents emigration to New York City, to the strange lives and deaths of her great-aunts and -uncles, to the neglectful upbringings of her wild mother and handsome father. Ava’s family are fools of fortune, and she finds that she’s no different. The multigenerational epic is woven through with fairy-tale touches and allegorical flourishes, and descriptions so dense and tactile you’ll almost want to lick the pages.