Welcome to Paradise Springs, Northern California – a hot, dusty, half-magical, wine-country town where there are so many grapes fermenting at one time, you get drunk from breathing the air; where devil winds blow so hard they whip your sense away. A town where every fairy tale you've ever read could be set...and "home" to the family Falls.
When a strange, enigmatic, rainbow-haired girl shows up in their fantastical hometown, it sends the lives of Fall brothers Wynton and Miles and their sister Dizzy into tumult. 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.
This is my first Jandy Nelson novel but it won't be my last as I absolutely loved it. I feel like my heart had been put through the wringer as I was constantly expecting the worst but when the world tipped over, there was only joy left in my heart.
This is the story of the Fall family and it is told from various narrators and in such a way that it feels like a fairy tale. As with all fairy tales there are both good and bad characters and challenges to overcome. With the various narrators, there are different styles of writing but I loved the different voices that shone through Jandy Nelson's writing.
As with most books like this, each reader will have a favourite strand of the story and, whilst you might wonder why we are exploring the other strands, it all comes together beautifully at the end. I think this is a book I will read again, now that I know the conclusion, to really appreciate the cleverness of the prose.
Mesmerising, heartwarming and always having the possibility of something magical happening, When the World Tips Over is a highly unusual and completely unique book that has the feel of an instant classic about it. I can see this being a book that is studied in schools in the future and it deserves every single one of the five stars I have awarded it.
I received a gifted paperback for the Tandem Collective readalong and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.
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