laurenlanz 's review for:

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

1.0

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I’m lost as to how this book is a Goodreads choice winner, considering the major mishandling of mental illness that is everywhere.

Huge trigger warnings: Abuse, suicide, death, depression
(Just thought I’d, you know, warn you, before going into this without being aware of the massive trigger warnings that somehow were not made clear at the beginning of this book.)

All The Bright Places follows two characters. A boy, Theodore Finch, and a girl, Violet Markey. Theodore is bipolar and constantly thinks about suicide, while Violet is mourning the death of her older sister. From there, the plot kind of disappears, oh wait, there is none.

It felt as if the author was trying to write a cute love story surrounding *??* mental illness, but instead ended up with a mishandled plot-less love story between two protagonists that have no personality.

Not to mention that Finch’s bipolar disorder was handled as a ‘quirk’ or something that made him interesting and cool. Mental illness definitely isn’t something to joke about, nor is it something to treat as an admirable trait. Everyone around Finch would neglect the obvious issue, instead laughing and joking with him about the different versions of himself.

Mental illness, on top of everything else, was romanticized in this book. Violet would look at the things clearly not okay with Finch, and instead of trying to help him she would think things like this: "I feel jealous of his brain. In this moment, mind feels so ordinary."

??? This is not okay?? The fact that this book is so well loved is saddening to me. I hate that the representation of mental illness was portrayed through two dimensional characters, that it was treated like a joke.

The cherry on top for me was reading the authors note at the end. I almost lost it when seeing the words-
“I wanted to write something edgy”
-at the back of this book. If this isn’t proof enough that Jennifer Niven has done minimal research into mental illness and handles it like a joke, I don’t know what else to say.

This is not a cute love story, this is a 400 page book that has no plot and a lot of mishandled topics. If you’re asking me, I’d tell you again and again not to waste your time.