Novel Review: All The Bright Places (Jennifer Niven, 2015)

"We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial."

All The Bright Places is my sixth Young Adult novel in almost four months, and unfortunately it was the worst of them all, despite my very high expectations for it. I was really looking forward to reading this book simply because it revolves around teen suicide; one of the most critical issues in the world nowadays, specifically in the US, where it is the third leading cause of death for those between 15 and 24 years old.

Author Jennifer Niven, penning her first YA novel, failed to build a story powerful enough to raise more awareness and shed the light on this rising threat, and focused instead on minor interactions between the two leading characters, Theodore and Violet, before their ultimate separation.

Personally, I wasn't amazed at all by how the love story evolved. Theo and V found themselves on the ledge of their high school's bell tower, then they joined forces on a geography project that became very annoying, boring and irrelevant, especially when other more important events should have been under the spotlight in the latter stages of the story. 

"You are all the colors in one, at full brightness."

And although I believed that Theo truly suffered from serious psychological and mental problems, I wasn't fully convinced by the motives and circumstances that led him to actually think about ending his life, taking into consideration that his love to Violet changed him drastically for the good. Most of Theodore's parts in the novel were vague and mixed up, just as his personality, and I found it very hard to sympathize with him, because as mentioned earlier, I didn't believe that his situation was bad enough for him to even contemplate suicide.

On the other hand, Violet's character was developed better by the author. Her behavior and way of thinking were logical given her sister's tragic death and how her parents kind of kept her locked inside that dark world after the accident, by overprotecting her. And then there was her noticeable and consequential transformation by Theodore's relationship and how he actually liberated her and returned her back to her normal life. Despite all of this however, I didn't connect to Violet on an emotional level, mainly due to that ambiguous and unrealistic relation she had with Theo for a relatively short period of time.

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"

As a love tale between two teenagers, All The Bright Places was so ordinary and traditional, and so it is a failure in this regard. As a book trying to bring teen suicide to the surface as a significant danger to humanity, it wasn't persuasive and genuine enough. I doubt I'll be reading any YA novel any time soon.

My Rating: 6/10