I first heard about Jandy Nelson shortly after I started my first ever book blog back in 2017. This was obviously I’ll Give You the Sun, which I read and took me a long long while to enjoy. That same year, I’ve read (and had the same experience with) The Sky Is Everywhere and then it has been crickets ever since. Until earlier this year, when When the World Tips Over was announced. Even though I hardly read young adult books these days and I wasn’t the biggest fan of Nelson’s earlier work, I still was curious for this new book in nearly a decade. Did this take shorter for me to enjoy?

About the book

When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson
Published by Dial Books on September 24, 2024
Pages: 528
ISBN: 9780525429098
Genres: Contemporary, Young adult

An explosive new novel brimming with love, secrets, and enchantment

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.

My review

Before reading

I decided to dive into this book with little to no expectations at all. My earlier reading experience for Nelson’s novels were still fresh in mind and I wasn’t certain whether I would have time and patience for a similar reading experience. (Un)Fortunately, I hadn’t seen many ARC reviews before release, so I didn’t know what to expect. On one hand this was good, so I wouldn’t be influenced by said reviews. On the other hand, I’m always curious before diving into a book what other people thought about it. However, I expected this needed a long run up till I was submerged into the characters and plot. Just like before. This indeed became true, but it took a shorter while than I’d initially thought.

Characters

One of this author’s talents is writing the most quirky and out of the box characters you will ever encounter in YA books. These characters are not your average YA characters, but a bit alternative. They of course have their struggles, like many young adults, but they have more depth to them. They often have special interests or lifestyles, something you don’t see that often in YA. In this novel we follow several characters: siblings Dizzy, Miles and Winton Fall, and Cassidy, the  intriguing new girl in town. Dizzy is quite misunderstood at school and has no friends. She desperately longs for a good relationship with her older brother Miles, as Winton fell out of their family’s good graces. Miles struggles with needing to maintain his image of perfect boy at school. He struggles with himself and what he wants in life, he therefore seeks refuge in books. Winton is the complete opposite, he gets into trouble a lot. Yes, of the criminal kind. Cassidy is a mystery, because why is she in town and why is she involved with the Fall siblings? Once tragedy strikes, we find out a lot more about these characters. In fact, we learn the most about Cassidy, Winton and Miles, Dizzy is more of a side character here. We get to know her, but less in depth. Same for Bernadette, their mom. She plays an important role in this book though, because she has been withholding essential information for a long time. This information is slowly revealed though. Despite Nelson’s ability to write such different characters from the mainstream ones, I still feel like I could connect better to more of these mainstream characters. In fact, I got a little annoyed by the lifestyle of Cassidy and the character of Dizzy. I rolled my eyes a lot by their inner monologues, I’m sorry.

Writing

Whereas I don’t really resonate with the characters, the writing was beautiful. It took me some time to get used to it. At the end of many chapters, there are letters and notes that are an essential part of this story. It has been a while since I encountered this, so this was definitely a change for me. However, the writing was still intriguing. The POV switching has been done really well, so is the third person POV narrative. Usually I’m not the biggest fan of this, but for this type of story it works. It feels like there’s a omniscient narrator here and I think this is the best execution for this novel. There are several flashbacks which are written fine too.

Plot

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of character driven books. This book however, is a mix of being character driven and plot driven. The characters undergo a lot of growth and some even an entire transformation. They are finding themselves and their path in life. Also, they gain answers to remaining questions and for these questions, this novel is plot driven. However, this is quite confusing. There is the main story, but there are several backstories involved as well. These are a essential part of the bigger picture, something I didn’t expect. Personally, I was more intrigued by said backstories than by the main plot. They bring a mysterious vibe to this book and I just wanted to unravel it all. Unfortunately for me, this book has quite of an open ending and I don’t appreciate that but that’s personal preference.

Final thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed reading When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson. It’s a big one with 500+ pages, but somehow I flew through it in a breeze once I had the time to commit to this book. Whereas I didn’t resonate with the characters – and was annoyed by some –, I was intrigued by the writing style and the plot. The mystery the backstories provide were the most interesting to me and therefore I wanted to continue. Will this book stay with me for a long time? I don’t think so, but it was an interesting reading experience nonetheless.