A few pages in and I had a quick John Green flashback. It has all those YA elements but it stood out in its own unique way. This is a story about young people going through a grim point in their lives and how they overcome these hurdles, crossing the line to a stronger version of themselves.
They met during lunch hour, right when they were about to jump off a ledge in front of their school. But didn't. What was so awful that led these young individuals to that edge? Finch, a senior, an oddball at school, is about to graduate. He comes from a distorted home. Raised in an atmosphere like that, shattered him growing up. He has a lot of angst and a de-routed fire that was burning him slowly. He is also a boy whose daily thoughts include if today is the day he doesn't fail, if today would be his last. During one of these proud attempts, he meets a girl.
Violet is floating through time after the sudden loss of her sister. She is the popular girl at school who has fallen from her throne and landed far away from any of the clicks. Finding herself on that bell tower stumped her more than anyone. She wanted to go back to the picture perfect times with her sister. Freeze those last moments, clutching tightly on to the frame, letting them from springing out. The next time she met Finch was when they came together for a class project. Involving some wandering, some hunting of treasured hidden places.
During the course of the assignment, in their quest for these charming buried places, they start to see the other part of themselves, a better side. The thought of how they met was slowly fading away. Violet, was becoming friends with the class weirdo and she enjoyed every minute of it. To her, Finch was pulling her out of this yawning hole, which she never thought she could escape, and all Finch wanted was to help her.
When they were together, no one else existed in their bubble. They could be their true selves with each other. Though, this new relationship was gradually helping Violet, Finch’s condition was deteriorating on the inside. He could not move on from those years of distress and neglect. This drove them apart and one day Finch vanished. Poof!
Sadly tendencies like depression and anxiety issues are only growing in the younger generation now. We read about these misfortunes regularly and brush it off. A subject like suicide is not an easy one to confront, especially in a YA novel. Niven confronted this topic with such charm and purity. She gives you a simple story with some intricately nuanced protagonists. All The Bright Places shows us how the littlest of things can affect us and the people around us without any sense of realization, driving us to these dim obscure places inside we didn’t know could exist. Not being a great reader of YA novels myself, however, for whatever reason I didn’t put this one down.