I bought this book on December 26, 2009 after reading Marchetta's Saving Francesca in one day, and after making it through the first five chapters, I put it down and didn't pick it up again until 2015. At the time, it had been a few months after I finished Allegiant by Veronica Roth, and that book was so absolutely dreadful I stopped wanting to read, stopped wanting to be a writer, stopped wanting to have anything to do with books. As an English major, this was a bit of a problem. I was desperate to read something, anything, that was mildly better than Allegiant, and as I was waiting for my library holds to come in, I returned to On the Jellicoe Road which was saved onto my Kindle.
I finished it in a week, and at the end of the week, I bought a hard copy to lend out to my friends because my love of reading was fully restored.

Since then, I have gifted this book to professors, friends, family, and everyone who I can think of.

This book is like a spiderweb. There is so much going on and being weaved together that for the first fifty or so pages it can be a bit overwhelming and frustrating. (Thus, me setting it down for 6 years.) But, after sorting through the tangled and seeing how things connected, it became, like most spiderwebs, captivating and beautiful.

The characters are complicated and not entirely likeable but distinctively loveable. The plots (all 3-4) of them are intriguing and kept me guessing and drawing out how I thought the pieces connected in an old notebook.

I loved every single piece of this book. The way Marchetta structured her sentences, the way she built the relationships between the characters, the organization of the tangled plots.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

Update on May 25th:

Spoiler

This book is just as beautiful the third time around. Knowing exactly how the pieces tied together replaced the tense confusion with a heartbreaking beauty. I think I might have sobbed harder this read than either of the previous two.