Thanks to Penguin Books and Netgalley I was thrilled to get access to an early copy of When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson. I’ll Give You the Sun is one of my all-time favorite YA novels, and my expectations going in were pretty high. Maybe that’s why they were not met? The TLDR: this book was so overlong that it started to make me resentful towards the MANY characters and their increasingly repetitive inner monologue. Additionally, the structure of the narrative was not organized in a way that made it seamless to remember the complex connections of all these family members. Threads were dropped to hastily get picked up again a hundred pages later.
Upon first blush, I will say that was enjoying the very lovable and idiosyncratic characters that Nelson writes so well. Then the storyline, which included a little magical realism, pulled me in and I thought I was going to get a little bit of a mix between Rabbit Cake and Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance. And I would say that if that appeals, you might enjoy this book with the aforementioned caveats.
There was still lovely writing, and I did enjoy the plot threads coming together in the end. It will certainly not be the last Jandy Nelson book I read!