"All the Bright Places" | 60second Book Review
"All the Bright Places" by Jennifer Niven. 60second Book Review by Jenny Sawyer. http://goo.gl/Hp5Ie5
Illness—and, increasingly, mental illness—is a popular topic for YA novels these days. And why not? Melodrama sells. Really, I’m not being cynical; I’m just stating a fact.
Here’s another fact: Normally, I HATE books like All the Bright Places. I don’t like being set up for heartbreak and devastation. And I especially don’t like stories that lead me down the twisted, shadowy path of mental illness, because I’m a wimp and, for the most part, I don’t do well with upsetting subject matter.
So while it would be inaccurate to say that "All the Bright Places" completely won me over—I could never, ever read this book again—I will say that for me, this was a different kind of illness book.
Was it disturbing? Yes. Did I cry? Buckets. But what made the book readable—and recommend-able—was that Jennifer Niven’s story didn’t for one moment feel exploitative. It didn’t feel like she was drawing me into these characters’ problems just to toy with my emotions. Instead, Violet and Finch came alive in the pages of this book. They felt like real people dealing with real issues. Difficult, heartbreaking issues, to be sure. But issues that teens are facing, and that need to be dealt with openly, honestly, and sensitively. Which Niven does incredibly well.
"All the Bright Places" really is a beautiful book that’s worth reading. More importantly, it’s one worth putting in the hands of teens who are thinking about how to help—or even just understand—other teens struggling with the burden of mental illness.
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In “All the Bright Places” by Jennifer Niven, Violet is troubled by her sister’s death. Finch is troubled by the thought of staying alive. When Finch and Violet meet in their school’s bell tower—each with plans of a deadly jump—these two teens are thrust into a friendship that ultimately changes them both…at least temporarily.