Book Review: All the Bright Places

Synopsis:

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death. Every day he thinks of ways he might kill himself, but every day he also searches for—and manages to find—something to keep him here, and alive, and awake.

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her small Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school—six stories above the ground— it’s unclear who saves whom. Soon it’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink. . . .

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Review

All the Bright Places has been sitting on my shelves for at least a year and although I heard great things about it I just never seemed in the right mood to read it. However, after reading a lot of fantasy this year I found myself in a contemporary mood and ended up giving this book a try. Unfortunately it did not live up to the hype.

This novel is told in the altering first person perspectives of Violet and Finch who met on the ledge of the bell tower at school. While Finch was known for being weird, Violet was a popular girl. Therefore it was easy for them to weave this story that Violet talked Finch down from the tower even though the truth was it was actually the other way around. After this shared experience Violet and Finch naturally end up romantically involved.

For Finch his focus was on staying “awake” as he calls it. Finch goes through these periods of being “asleep” where he loses track of time and can’t really do anything. I took this to mean he falls into a deep depression. Differently Violet is just focused on counting down the days until graduation so she can leave town and move one from her sister’s death. Both Violet and Finch have their issues but Finch’s obviously stems from a mental illness that his family doesn’t seem all that concerned about. Differently, Violet’s parents are very concerned about her and they have a right to be since she refused to get in a car because her sister died in a car accident.

I wanted to like the message of this novel but it was hard for me to acknowledge that when I disliked the characters so much. I found both Violet and Finch irritating and though I wanted to feel sympathetic towards them it was difficult for me to find sympathy. I just didn’t really love anything about this book. The plot was just fine, the romance wasn’t all that exciting, and though I get the message I was annoyed with how this book ended. In summary I don’t get the hype at all so this is definitely a borrow for me.

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