Reviews with content warning for Child death - All the Bright Places

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This was not an easy book to read. I took a few breaks to feel my feelings before picking it back up. That being said, Jennifer Niven did an amazing job of showing Violet and Finch’s worlds colliding, melding, and ripping apart.

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cschaepe84's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Humorous, deep, insightful all in one despite the dark subject matter. Haunting, yet devastatingly beautiful.
I am destroyed. The tears cannot stop falling once they come.
A beautiful, yet heart-wrenching tragic story about two broken people who fall in love, and then fall apart.
Violet and Theodore "Finch" knew of each other from school, but never really had a meaningful interaction until one day on the school bell tower when they were each thinking about suicide. This is nothing new for Finch, as he has been struggling from an unnamed mental affliction, more than likely bipolar, for years and has already been labeled as the school "freak" and "weirdo" and so nobody thinks much of his dramatic display. Violet, however, is more part of the popular crowd, a good girl of whom a bad thing happened to, losing her sister in a car accident nearly a year ago. Everyone's concerned for her, and watch with horror as the two of them interact up there. Now, nobody knows what is said between them, nobody sees what really transpires, which is why when Finch talks Violet down from the bell tower, they are instantly bound by secret. To save her reputation, Finch loudly declares Violet his savior, and lets everyone think that it was Violet that talked Finch out of suicide, nothing more. Life goes on, Violet's reputation intact, and Finch proving once again what a "freak" he is.
Violet thinks nothing of it, really. Ever since her sister died from a car accident that she survived, she has been struggling with grief, guilt, and depression. Life has become restrictive for her, and all her interests and everything that made her her fades into the woodwork, and she doesn't recognize the girl she has become. She has loving parents, good friends at school, including one of the most popular girls in the class. She has a supportive ex-boyfriend, a boy who everyone at school loves, and he waits patiently in the wings for her to come back to him. But Violet is a shell of the girl she was. Nobody expects anything of her because of her complicated grief, and she is more or less treated as a fragile china doll, and her grief becomes a free pass to avoid life.
She shares US Geography with Finch. They have a last semester project for the class in which you have to work in pairs, and Finch loudly declares for Violet to be his partner. Violet wants to get out of the project, but Mr. Black does not allow her to take a pass on it. Because the project is to get to know the state of Indiana, all the places to go and see, and report it toward the end of the year. And so, to Violet's dismay, her journey with Finch begins.
Honestly, I really love Finch. He's hard not to like and is very thoughtful and insightful, sharing his musings about death that are at times funny (even though death is not funny, but I have a dark and dry sense of humor, and sometimes I deal with my sad thoughts too this way, so I totally understand it). He is fascinated by death, not so much because he's incredibly depressed, but because he feels at times overwhelmed by his own existence and how he relates to the world around him (or at least that's how I interpret him). I love getting inside Finch's head, and as a psych nurse, I have an appreciation of how his mind works and what he experiences. But, his mind is a lonely place, a party of one, and although he has two great friends, he feels misunderstood and unwanted by those around him. Despite this, he still tries to reach out for love, and the moment Violet smiled at him, a real smile, not a fake smile, he becomes fascinated with her.
Violet and Finch's interactions are entertaining to read and adorable. He and he alone knows the secret pain Violet is in, and challenges her to get out a live again. By using their Geography project, the two spend time together, and slowly become enmeshed in each other's lives, eventually falling in love. Violet is able to finally really start living, to be present in the moment and fill each day with meaning, instead of simply counting down the days until graduation.
But little does she know, that while she's coming into full bloom, Finch is starting to wither away. His mental health deteriorates. He starts to live in his closet instead of his bedroom because the space overwhelms him. He pains his whole room blue to feel like he's surrounded by water. He struggles to stay, if even just for Violet, but as he worsens, even she is not enough, and he does take his own life.
But that's not the end of the story. Yes, it's very sad, and Finch's death left me crushed along with Violet. However, in small ways, Finch leaves Violet with something of a scavenger hunt on the map from their Wandering Indiana project. He knew she needed to get out into the world and broaden her horizons, and even in death, thinks about her. She finishes their map, and finds traces of him left behind, seeing the world through his eyes, and feeling all the more grateful for this.
Suicide is a very tough subject to touch in a novel without either fluffing it up, romanticizing it, or making the victim or the survivors out to be a villain, but I felt that this book covers it eloquently. This book does not shy away from acknowledging the tragedy that a suicide is, but it does not point a particular blame on anyone in particular either. I understand a lot of the negative reviewers felt that Finch's personality was defined by his mental illness, but I definitely did not feel that this was the case. As a person, he is thoughtful, imaginative, feels very deeply, and always thirsts for knowledge, which I could separate from his mental illness. I like how there wasn't the "he was too beautiful for this world" message either, which would have, yes, romanticized his death and sent a bad message about suicide. I felt that the portrayal was rather honest, albeit painful, which I how I felt Violet's experience was when she was dealing with his passing. Toward the end of the book, even with her sadness, Violet is able to become emotionally stronger and fully confront and deal with Eleanor's death and all the emotions she's kept hidden the whole time. I feel that the message here is to take life by making a series of wonderful moments to hold onto, along with the bad, and that life in and of itself is a journey, and that "it's not what you take, it's what you leave behind."

Reading Progress

Content Warnings

ltulisiak's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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parasihir's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book eats me up from the inside. Reading Theodore's point of view can kill me. Poor my baby blue.

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steal_yo_kneecaps's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

One of the best damn books I've read. Annotated the hell out of this book. I seriously doubt there is a single page without some form of annotation in it. It put things into words that I personally have struggled to do for years. Fully recommend.

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4l3yda's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

whatbidoureads's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.25

(TW: heavy topics are brought up in this review, if you are triggered by mental illnesses, please skip this review and have a great day!)
I bought this book when it first came out and left it on the shelf because the main topic is one that hits close to home.
Then a movie came out (because every best seller needs a movie am I right…) and I watched it. I know you’ll say you should read the book first blablabla and most times I agree with you. But this time I don’t.
The movie I watched, even “enjoyed” to some extent.
BUT THE BOOK.

I usually put a book down when I don’t like it but I finished this one just to write a review. Bare with me as I try to word it out in a clear nice way.
As someone who has an understanding, and first hand experience of the main topics in this book I would never recommend it to someone. I’d go as far as to say it can cause so much harm if I’m the wrong hands (aka someone dealing with S.A and mental illnesses).
I understand this book was written by a survivor of suicide through the loss of a friend and it almost feels like an autobiography dedicated to the love Jennifer had for her friend, and I can get behind that. (note: everyone’s grieving process is different, and I am in no way undermining her grief, or the process she has gone through)
But the take she has on mental illness, and teenagers is appalling.

The book starts nice and gentle with 2 teens connecting under the circumstances of Violet - popular girl- dealing with the loss of her sister in a car accident, and Finch - outcast- dealing with bullying and depression (to make it short). The beginning is sweet as he kind of forces his way into her life and picks her up off the ground to “live again” after her sisters death. But on the other side you have his story. A glorified anti-hero who is at first portrayed as this cool, misunderstood, handsome so called “freak” with personal struggles, who towards the end is portrayed as someone who was trying to get better, and wanted to live. As a survivor myself, I can tell you I didn’t see it. (And I’m one to annotate and highlight my books).
At no point was there any indication of character growth towards that, or any indication of help he could have gotten from others. So on one hand you have Violet, main character, good growth, she eventually grieves all her losses (without any counseling, help group, friend or family’s help but finch - like what), and Finch who was left for dead from the beginning of the book.

There’s a few topics that annoyed me in this book as well, and that in my eyes are cannot be overlooked as they are everywhere in the book.
- Talk of mental illnesses in the sense that some characters are simply restricted to their illness (such as ~~self-harm, eating disorders, depression~~), and Finch is basically a glorified ~~suicide~~ victim,
- ~~slut~~ shaming,
- body shaming,
- Speech about the girls in the book (they are looked down upon),
- the lack of adult/parental figure. In fact there was literally NO ONE helping Finch to get better.

His mother too worried about her own personal struggles, the COUNCELOR too busy explaining that if a student ~~dies~~ on school grounds he will get a lawsuit, his dad with a new family, his so called friends who randomly pop into the story, and the help group with literally one session and no follow ups on that lead in the story.

Overall, this book is very disappointing and if you skip it, you won’t miss anything unfortunately..

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