The sky is everywhere

Oof. What an irritating, uninspired book.

Three words about the writing: death by metaphor. More than once I would look up and go “...what are you trying to say with that metaphor.” Some of the metaphors flat-out made no sense to me.

The characters were nauseatingly whimsical at times and way too mature to be believable. They seem to suffer from John Green-itis, meaning they read books that teenagers don't read (the main character Lennie mentions Wuthering Heights ad nauseum), and they speak like people twice their age. It was hard to connect to any of them, except Bailey (EXCEPT SHE'S DEAD SO SHE ISN'T IN THE NOVEL VERY MUCH). I was pretty much choking on the irritating whimsy of each character. It's easier to connect to characters that use dialogue that one could expect to hear in the real world. Not so with this book.

I also found the book needlessly melodramatic. I assumed that the plot would rely mainly on the grief process experienced by the main character and her loved ones. But nope. Love triangle. IT'S A LOVE TRIANGLE BOOK. She is wooed almost immediately by her dead sister's boyfriend Toby (nice...) and is simultaneously wooed by the new French guy at school. So her grief and frenzied feelings about her sister's sudden death get put on the back burner in favor of this uninteresting cliche. We already have a plethora of books to choose from that feature love triangles, and they do it a lot better than this one. Why not let this be a book about grief and growing up?

Overall I was disappointed with The Sky Is Everywhere. I would recommend it to those who enjoy John Green's work, which generally does not work for me.