When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson: Review

Welcome to my review of When the World Tips Over by Jandy Nelson! I’ve read every one of her books so far, and I’ll read anything else she writes. This review is a part of Colored Pages’ When the World Tips Over book tour for the new paperback release of the book.

Title: When the World Tips Over
Author: Jandy Nelson
Genre: YA Contemporary
Publisher: Dial Books
(Paperback) Pub Date: 09/23/25

Description

The explosive novel that brims with love, secrets, and enchantment by Jandy Nelson, Printz Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of I’ll Give You the Sun

Years ago in California wine country, where the sun pours out of the sky and the hot devil winds blow the sense right out of your head, the three Fall siblings’ father mysteriously disappeared, breaking the family into pieces. Now Dizzy, age twelve, bakes cakes, sees spirits, and wishes she were the heroine of a romance novel. “Perfect Miles,” seventeen, the boy no one worries about (though everyone should) is adrift, only the neighbor’s dog aware that he dreams of other guys. And Wynton, 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 her out, catastrophe strikes, leaving the Falls more broken than ever.

With rivalries, road trips, family curses, and love stories upon love stories, this era-spanning epic explores the sorrows and joys passed from one generation to the next, as a family tries to rewrite their future.

Review

When the World Tips Over was wholly unique, strange in every way, and everything I could have wanted. I would love to spend a week in Jandy Nelson’s brain because the way she’s able to create such imaginative and moving books amazes me every time. This book was over 500 pages, and I could have moved in. I never wanted to leave the Fall siblings and the magic of Paradise Springs. I love mixed media and the fact there were newspaper clippings, emails, diary entries, and stories really added to the magic. But I especially love books where everything is connected in ways you never could have imagined and yet you couldn’t imagine them not being that way. Miles’ POV was my favorite, but I loved learning about Cassidy’s betrayals the most. There wasn’t a character I wasn’t drawn to though.

This is truly a book you just have to buckle in for because the description doesn’t even scratch the surface of all there is to find in this book. The harshness of friendship breakups. Talking dogs. Ms. Mary Mack. Cain and Abel. Giants. Twists galore. Abandonment. It was an emotional rollercoaster that made me want to get in line again. I would recommend checking this one out for yourself because it definitely made my world tip over.

*Thank you to Penguin Teen and Colored Pages Book Tour for the copy. All opinions are my own.*

Author

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 a full-time writer, Jandy lives and writes in San Francisco, California, not far from the settings of her novels.