The Sky Is Everywhere (review)

It's been a month since Lennie's vivacious older sister, Bailey, died unexpectedly, and eleventh-grader Lennie is caught in the agonizing throes of grief. She's at first the only girl in school who hardly notices charismatic Joe Fontaine, a gifted musician who has moved into their small town and joined their school orchestra, but it soon becomes clear that Joe is interested in Lennie. She finds herself falling for him as well, but her situation is further complicated by the attraction she feels for her sister's boyfriend, Toby, an attraction that leads to intense and confusing physical encounters. As Lennie tries to sort out her whirling emotions, she begins to look beneath the surface of her family and her understanding of her role in it ("What happens to a stupid companion pony when the racehorse dies?"), now that the loss of Bailey has changed both forever. We've seen a lot of books about mourning and survivor guilt, and this is surely one of the most moving. Nelson documents Lennie's stumbling negotiation of her emotional maelstrom with delicacy and shimmering clarity, writing with sorrowful, consoling tenderness of the journey through various stages of bereavement; the romance with Joe brings out Lennie's credible combination of vulnerability and resistance to joy, and even Lennie's occasional free-verse poems turn out to have a plot purpose. The characterization is clear-eyed and evocative, with even dreamy Joe realistically flawed (his own past issues prevent him from seeing how hard he is on Lennie for her grief-addled mistakes) and Lennie's family gently, plausibly colorful. It's romantic without being gooey and tear-jerking without being campy—what more could a reader want?