Review by Brie: HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSE by Jennifer Niven
HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSE by Jennifer Niven is releasing on October 4th (just 2 short weeks!). We are so thankful to have been given an early copy and the opportunity to read and share our thoughts on this book with you.
Keep reading for Brie's review and make sure to keep your eyes on Ursula's Instagram account for her thoughts around release day.
If I’m being honest, I
wasn’t the biggest fan of Jennifer’s first novel ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES. Not
because I didn’t enjoy the writing or the characters though. I felt like I
spent the whole book just waiting for this awful thing to happen. So I was in a
constant state of anxiety as to WHEN it would happen. It put a very depressive
tone to my whole reading experience, but maybe this was how she wanted the
reader to feel. When I finished reading ALL THE BRIGHT PLACES and I read the
“Author’s Note” about how it was kind of an autobiography and a story Jennifer
needed to tell, which actually did change my feelings and I wished that I had
known that bit of information going into the story. With that being said, I
ABSOLUTELY LOVED this book. I’m so grateful that I didn’t let my first
experience with Jennifer Niven’s work deter me from reading her latest novel, HOLDING
UP THE UNIVERSE.
Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed “America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief. Now, Libby’s ready: for high school, for new friends, for love, and for EVERY POSSIBILITY LIFE HAS TO OFFER. In that moment, I know the part I want to play here at MVB High. I want to be the girl who can do anything.
Everyone thinks they know Jack Masselin, too. Yes, he’s got swagger, but he’s also mastered the impossible art of giving people what they want, of fitting in. What no one knows is that Jack has a newly acquired secret: he can’t recognize faces. Even his own brothers are strangers to him. He’s the guy who can re-engineer and rebuild anything in new and bad-ass ways, but he can’t understand what’s going on with the inner workings of his brain. So he tells himself to play it cool: Be charming. Be hilarious. Don’t get too close to anyone.
Until he meets Libby. When the two get tangled up in a cruel high school game—which lands them in group counseling and community service—Libby and Jack are both pissed, and then surprised. Because the more time they spend together, the less alone they feel. . . . Because sometimes when you meet someone, it changes the world, theirs and yours.
Jennifer Niven delivers another poignant, exhilarating love story about finding that person who sees you for who you are—and seeing them right back.
…suddenly I feel naked, like I might as well be laid out on a
dissecting table, insides exposed to the world. There’s no way I can ever
explain to anyone other than my dad the importance of being prepared, of always
being one step ahead of everyone and everything.
“Better to be the hunter instead of the hunted. Even if you’re
hunting yourself.”
HOLDING UP THE UNIVERSE is
a coming of age story about two teens going through two very different issues,
yet they find a sense of acceptance and meaning in each other. I connected with
both of the main characters immediately. I didn’t deal with exactly the same
issue that they did while in high school, but I dealt with my own share of
bullying throughout my education. So much so that I ended up switching schools
in middle school and leaving high school early. Much like what drew the author
to write ALL THE BRING PLACES, the characters and experiences in HOLDING UP THE
UNIVERSE stemmed from her personal life. Jack suffers from something called
face blindness. This is a disorder that I had never heard of before. Jennifer
did such an amazing job with Jack’s parts in the novel. His point of view
really made me “see” what it must feel like to live with it every day. In a
note to the readers she tells us that her cousin also suffers from this same
disorder. What an amazing thing for her to be able to share his story and
expose all of us to something that is actually more common than we may think. It’s
about as common as having red hair (like me!).
This is what I know about loss.
It doesn’t get better. You just get (somewhat) used to it.
You never stop missing the people who go away.
For something that isn’t’ there anymore, it weighs a ton.
Being quite a bit older
than these characters, I have been through much in my life. This quote hit a
cord with me. It’s so true that when you lose something or someone it weighs on
you and your life. Amazing that something that isn’t there can have such a
profound affect. This book also addresses bullying, loss and depression. How
these things can affect, shape and change a person. Libby loses her mom just
before starting her teen years. This loss hits her so hard that she beings a
downward spiral of depression and isolation. For Libby the depression leads her
to eat and eat and eat until she’s so big that she can no longer move. That’s a
pretty extreme case but weight gain, food addiction and isolation are things
that can so easily happen to any of us at any age. I loved seeing her become
strong and confident throughout the book. There were moments when all I wanted
to do was crawl into the book, give her a big hug and a shoulder to cry on. But
there were also times where I could feel myself nodding my head saying: “Yep!
I’ve been there too girl.” Or times when I was cheering her on thinking “You go
girl! You rock.” With the bullying I experienced in my own life I almost felt
like I was Libby. I understood where her feelings were coming from and I only
wish I could have been as brave as her.
“People are shitty for a lot of reasons. Sometimes they’re just
shitty people. Sometimes people have been shitty to them and, even though they
don’t realize it, they take that shitty upbringing and go out into the world
and treat others the same way. Sometimes they’re shitty because they’re afraid.
Sometimes they choose to be shitty to others before others can be shitty to
them. Sometimes it’s like self-defensive shittiness.”
Amazon || Barnes & Nobel || iBooks || IndieBound
With the publication of her first book, The Ice Master, Jennifer became a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer. A nonfiction account of a deadly Arctic expedition, The Ice Master was released in November 2000 and named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, and translated into multiple languages, including German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Danish, and Icelandic. Jennifer and The Ice Master appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, The London Daily Mail, The London Times, and Writer's Digest, among others. Dateline BBC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel featured The Ice Master an hour-long documentaries, and the book was the subject of numerous German, Canadian, and British television documentaries. The Ice Master has been nominated for awards by the American Library Association and Book Sense, and received Italy's esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.
Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack — an inspiring true story of the woman the press called "the female Robinson Crusoe" — has been translated into Chinese, French, and Estonian, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick, and was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the Top Five Arctic books.
Her memoir, The Aqua-Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town, was published in February 2010 by Gallery Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and was optioned by Warner Bros. as a television series.
Her first novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive (based on her Emmy Award-winning film of the same name), was released July 2009 by Penguin/Plume. It was an Indie Pick for the August 2009 Indie Next List and was also a Costco Book of the Month. The second book in the Velva Jean series, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, was released by Penguin/Plume in August 2011, and the third book in the series, Becoming Clementine, was published in September 2012. The fourth Velva Jean novel, American Blonde, is available now.
With her mother, author Penelope Niven, Jennifer has conducted numerous seminars in writing and addressed audiences around the world. She lives in Los Angeles.
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