Review: All The Bright Places - Jennifer Niven

Genre: Contemporary

Published: 6th January 2015

Length: 388 pages

My rating: 7/10

Overview: Finch and Violet meet at the top of the bell tower. Thus follows an epic trip to see the greatest landmarks in their state. Finch teaches Violet how to love, but is their love enough to save him?

This book was recommended to me by so many people who told me it was the saddest book ever, and as I accidentally found out a big spoiler the ending was ruined a bit for me and didn't have quite the emotional impact that it should, but I still quite liked this book!

Our two main characters are Finch and Violet. Violet's sister died last year, she's still not coping and moving on with her life. To be honest, the most annoying thing about Violet is how much abuse she gave her fringe. I felt personally offended. But although she was pretty annoying at the start, she did get a little better as it went along and I can understand her fears and motives. I don't believe her character is the nice sweet person the author tried to make her out to be it; for example, when sharing news about Finch one of her old friend admits to a history of severe mental health problems. Instead of even asking if she's okay, Violet just starts going on about Finch, and it made me feel really bad for the other girl to be honest.

Finch I definitely liked a lot better as he was more of an interesting character than Violet. I've seen other people criticising this boom for romanticising mental illness, and yes I do agree partly with that but then again it is hard to write a romance book with mental illness as one of the main topics, turn it all into tragedy, and still accidentally not romanticise it a little? I'm not saying this is okay as mental illness definitely should not be romanticised but if you read the author's note at the end, she has had a lot of experience with the issues dealt with in the book so I trust her take on it.

This book had all the usual quirks and charm one would expect of a contemporary. Split POV is always fun to read too, and was effective in this case when one character's POV chapters suddenly stop :( I've heard there's going to be a movie which according to the book cover is 'coming soon' which I doubt because I checked it's IMDB page and it only has a director and a few producers attatched, as well as Elle Fanning slated to star as Violet. However she was set to star as Violet since before the book even came out I believe, so I think it's unlikely the film will be out for at least another couple of years.

Overall this is a sad, heartbreaking story and is one of those books that you do think about a little while longer after reading. However, just a warning, suicide, bipolar, death of a family member, and a slight touch upon bulimia are in the book so if these topics are triggering to you I would not read it.

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