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Book Summary and Reviews of When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson

When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson

When the World Tips Over

by Jandy Nelson

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  • Published:
  • Sep 2024, 528 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment by Jandy Nelson, Printz Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of I'll Give You the Sun.

The Fall siblings live in hot Northern California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky, and the devil winds blow so hard they whip the sense right out of your head.

Years ago, the Fall kids' father mysteriously disappeared, cracking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy Fall, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were a heroine of a romance novel. Miles Fall, seventeen, brainiac, athlete, and dog-whisperer, is a raving beauty, but also lost, and desperate to meet the kind of guy he dreams of. And Wynton Fall, nineteen, who raises the temperature of a room just by entering it, is a virtuoso violinist set on a crash course for fame ... or self-destruction.

Then an enigmatic rainbow-haired girl shows up, tipping the Falls' world over. She might be an angel. Or a saint. Or an ordinary girl. Somehow, she is vital to each of them. But before anyone can figure out who she is, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever. And more desperate to be whole.

With road trips, rivalries, family curses, love stories within love stories within love stories, and sorrows and joys passed from generation to generation, this is the intricate, luminous tale of a family's complicated past and present. And only in telling their stories can they hope to rewrite their futures.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"In this multigenerational epic sprinkled with magic, Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun) tackles grief, love, and the ways in which history commingles with the present... . Intricately rendered [and told] via myriad alternating perspectives ... Nelson takes readers on a whirlwind journey toward a profound and satisfying destination." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Nelson expertly weaves [all the threads] to create a splendid and complex tale. Her writing is magnetic, and teens will fall in love with her characters [and] be rewarded with a satisfying and soul-thrilling ending. This long-awaited follow-up to I'll Give You the Sun is well worth the wait." —School Library Journal (starred review)

"100% Nelson's signature fabulism and evocative, lyrical prose ... Readers will be satisfied by the emotional collision of the various plotlines and the richly drawn main and secondary characters... . A technicolor fever dream offering readers a sensory feast." —Kirkus Reviews

"[A] complex family saga about self-understanding, relationships, secrets, and passed-down family trauma... . Traversing a wide range of topics and emotions through multiple perspectives and formats, World contemplates each with due attention and nuance, [achieving] a quilt-like story both in its warmth and in its patches coming together to make a beautiful narrative." —Booklist

"Jandy Nelson is a true virtuoso, and When The World Tips Over left me speechless. I am fervently in love with this brave, funny, tender, exuberant beating heart of a book." —Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and co-author with Adam Silvera of What If It's Us

"When the World Tips Over is transcendently beautiful. It bursts with life and spills over with heartache and love." —Nina LaCour, Printz Award-winning author of We Are Okay and Yerba Buena

"Sublime, intricate, and dazzling, When the World Tips Over kept opening and opening before me like a glorious map of treasures. I loved all of its delightful, flawed, sensitive characters, and the magic inside each of them. Jandy Nelson has created an epic and intimate tale. I adored it." —Helena Fox, award-winning author of How It Feels to Float and The Quiet and the Loud

This information about When the World Tips Over was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Jandy Nelson Author Biography

Photo: Sonya Sones

Jandy Nelson is the New York Times bestselling author of I'll Give You the Sun, which received the Printz Award, was a Stonewall Honor Book, and was named one of TIME's 100 Best Young Adult Books of All Time. Her critically acclaimed debut, The Sky Is Everywhere, is now an AppleTV+ and A24 original film starring Jason Segel and Cherry Jones, for which Jandy wrote the screenplay. Together, Sun and Sky have sold well over a million copies worldwide and have been translated into more than thirty-eight languages. Both have been YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults picks and on multiple best of the year lists, have earned many starred reviews, and continue to enjoy great international success. Jandy's highly anticipated third novel, When the World Tips Over, releases in September 2024. Currently...

... Full Biography
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