A review by booksofgayle
The Sunshine Court by Nora Sakavic

4.25

WHO'S DOWN FOR ANOTHER ROUND OF WATCHING TEENAGERS LOSING IT OVER MAFIA STICK BALL????🫡🫡🫡 

in the kings men when we found out jean had been transferred to usc my exact words were "Jeaaan !!! After rain comes sunshine" well its 2024 and here comes the suuun☀️ it's been a long cold lonely winter

• can't believe we're meeting the gang again aaaaaahhh!!!
•  yk the nest torture & all was horrid but man.. when the ravens broke his favorite souvernir bear magnet that he got from kevin, and he tried to hold the pieces together... ouff..... sparked real hatred in my heart😭😂 I wanted to cry
•  helppp it rly dawns on u how fucking isolated jean was at the evermore cult when it's revealed he hasn't seen a microwave in years, wonders if bubble tea is carbonated and has never had a goddamn pizza😭🍕
•  jeremy helping him acclimatise to L.A is like watching an alien being introduced to earth
•  in my mind laila and cat's house looks kinda like the summer camp bunks from my childhood and it heals my soul a little to be there🥲
•  kevin "the queen" day still being the most hilarious & amazing character in all of aftg 🫶🫶🫶 i miss him every day (still can't believe man has a girlfriend lmaoo but i'm glad it's me)
•  coach wymack is my biggest role model in this life✊️
•  trauma works hard but betsy dobson works harder💪 (istg if that woman doesn't have the fattest paycheck & her own psychiatrist)
•  i read the og trilogy in october and this one early summer which just 😚🤌 YES
•  getting a morsel of andreil in 2024 was a religious experience
•  ngl tho it is a lot of treading water esp the first like 30% are pretty slow and repetitive bc it's almost exclusively from jean's pov and he spends almost ALL of that time isolated in one room mind-wrestling with himself & desperate to run back into the burning building .. but i guess it's pretty necessary so as not to feel rushed considering the magnitude of his life pre-USC. Either way it gets going after that!!!😃 also i think what made it worse was I didn't realize this wasn't gonna be a standalone(??) 😂 so I went in expecting like.. maybe not everything amazing and resolved by the end but i wasn't mentally prepared for this slowburn where jean's like
  "i have friends?" literally on the last page🫢
•  I love Jeremy sm ❤️🥺 the epitome of a comfort character, refreshing ray of sunshine in this damn aggressive darkness, we ALL needed him❤️❤️ "You are the captain of the sunshine court. In no universe could you be anyone's villain."
•  imagine going from rooming with the horror that was riko moriyama to a guy who puts a carboard dog in ur room to cheer you up
•  how jean went through all that he did and still manages to be the opposite of a people-pleaser with those brutally honest replies😂😂 mon cheri
•  "Safety was a dangerous illusion, but Jean still felt the gentle weight of it." 🥹🥹🥹don't touch me✋️🥹🥹🥹
•  permission to help jean break Lucas' face, coach?👹🥊💢
•  lorddd ik change is a slow thing but dam..... when we're 83% in & our boy was still saying "accidents happen in scrimmages" .. i was near rotting through the floorboards
•  I think my absolute favorite thing was watching Jean finding one small reason at a time to keep living. That was 😭🫶❤️ beautiful
•  the USC coaches hands fuller than a tick on a hound dawg🤠 fight on
•  (the amount of times i've written couch instead of coach here LOL)
•  all my love for every jean-jeremy moment but i think my fav scene was hands down cat & jean's bike ride to the beach🌊
•  😔✋️not ok to give us that bitch ass grayson while im still in sunglasses partying over the fresh grave of riko moriyama
  (im glad we dealt with that quickly. sometimes having mafia connections is good ig🫶😁)
•  .... jean could become.... a coach...?👀

lil' jean playlist🫶🤗
🎵 Daylily - Movements
🎵 Here Comes the Sun - SYML
🎵 Daylight - David Kushner
🎵 True Faith - Ashley Johnson

"Isn’t that reason enough to keep living? To rediscover simple delights one moment at a time, I mean." ... "What you hold onto is less important than the act of holding on itself. It’s so easy to get lost in ourselves and this world. Sometimes you need to find your way back one tiny miracle at a time."