Review: HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME by Adam Silvera

FACTS ABOUT THE BOOK

Title: History Is All You Left Me 
Author: Adam Silvera
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Price: 8.99€ (Amazon)

Pages: 304
Genre: LGBTQ*, Dealing with Death
Year: 2017 

BACK OF THE BOOK / WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

SPOILER WARNING! (already gives some major points of the book away)

When Griffin’s first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college and started seeing Jackson, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right. But now, the future he’s been imagining for himself has gone far off course.

To make things worse, the only person who truly understands his heartache is Jackson. But no matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin’s downward spiral continues. He’s losing himself in his obsessive compulsions and destructive choices, and the secrets he’s been keeping are tearing him apart.

If Griffin is ever to rebuild his future, he must first confront his history, every last heartbreaking piece in the puzzle of his life.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK

I wanted to read a book from Adam Silvera for a long time because I've been following him on Instagram for a while now and just love him - he's a huge Potterhead like me and is always so lovely and enthusiastic and it's really heartwarming to see how much he and Becky Albertalli support each other. I also loved seeing his book in the Love,Simon movie - which was another tribute to the great friendship these two share. (click here to get to my last Becky Albertalli review of Leah On The Offbeat)

So I bought his two latest novels: History Is All You Left Me and They Both Die At The End and was very excited to read them. I'm also very much in love with the UK Cover of History Is All You Left Me that I have and hoped that this book would be as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside.

Unfortunately, I must say that I was rather disappointed in the book. :(

It has barely 300 pages, wherefore I expected to finish it very quickly - but sadly I had to really force myself through it because it was very dragging to read and made me feel tired and exhausted while reading it - to the point that I often took a nap after I read a few chapters in it. This book really dragged me down because it was very depressing to read. In that aspect it reminded me a lot on The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (click here for my review) because I felt the same way with that book. 

The subject of the book is sad and therefore it's definitely not a happy reading experience. And I'm not generally against books that make you sad - I rather like it when a book makes me emotional. But I don't like to be dragged down by a book right from the start until the end. That just makes for an unhappy reading experience that I can't enjoy at all because there's this inner resistance of me not even wanting to continue reading the book because I don't want to fill my time with this depressing sadness. 

I also think that it would have been a better read if I had at least been able to relate to the main character, Griffin, more. I just didn't like him. And when you don't like the main character but are forced to spend the whole book in his head, it's a really unnerving experience. 

The book is structured in alternating HISTORY and TODAY chapters - whereas the TODAY chapters deal with Griffin after his ex-boyfriend Theo's death and the HISTORY chapters tell the story of how Griffin and Theo fell in love and everything that happened until Theo died. And since Griffin praised Theo to the skies in the TODAY chapters I expected that the TODAY chapters would be the sad ones but that this sadness would get balanced out by the happiness of the HISTORY chapters. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at all. Griffin actually seemed no different in the HISTORY chapters than he was in the TODAY chapters - not much happier, not any more relatable or likeable. And that really annoyed me and I would have really preferred it if there had been another voice in this book and not only Griffin and his bad mood. 

I often talk about the importance of the length of chapters for my reading speed in my reviews. Well, this book had rather short chapters and that still didn't speed up my reading because I just didn't enjoy reading it. So if you're not in the book, the chapter length can be extremely short and the book will still take you ages to finish. It's also definitely a book that would have put me in a reading slump if I hadn't read it in summer. (because I read 10 times faster in summer)

Since Adam Silvera is such an outspoken Potterhead on his Instagram, I expected a lot of references in his books and was quite excited for those. There were both Harry Potter and Star Wars references in HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME but because I couldn't connect to the main character and therefore also not really to the whole story, they didn't really get me excited at all. And when I reach the point that not even Harry Potter and Star Wars references get me in a book, the book really failed for me.

I liked most of the characters that weren't Griffin - which is again why I think I would have definitely enjoyed the book A LOT more if there had been different perspectives in it. I always felt so stuck in Griffin's head and felt very uncomfortable there. I found Jackson and Wade to be way more interesting characters than Griffin and also liked there dynamics with Griffin a lot more than the dynamic between Griffin and Theo. But the book put most of its emphasis on the bond between Griffin and Theo, which never got to me. I couldn't feel any chemistry between them but there was definitely some chemistry between Griffin and Jackson and I'm not too happy with the way that that chemistry got explored. There's a lot of wasted potential in my opinion in that book. I also really felt like the author actually wanted to reach a different ending than he eventually did. There comes a point in the book where some sort of twist gets revealed and that really felt like a sudden change of thought that the author had and couldn't really incorporate into the book quite smoothly. 

Often books have great starts and great endings but drag a lot in the middle. It was the complete opposite for this book. Somewhere in the middle the book actually got a lot better and I thought that I might end up giving it a lot more stars than I initially intended to - but then it got worse again in the end and left me feeling as disappointed as I felt most of the time that I spent with the book. 

Since the book is divided in this mix of TODAY and HISTORY chapters, the chronology is messed up, but still Griffin started to open up a lot more in the second half of the book and when a character opens up, he immediately gets more interesting and layered and therefore also more relatable.

I also really liked that Theo, who only got praise in the first half of the book, got admitted to have had flaws as well. That also made him a lot more realistic and drew me closer to the story. I just always feel distanced to characters that aren't admitted to have any flaws - that are described to be so perfect and even though it's obviously hard to talk bad about someone who has just died, I felt that it was so important to give this character a bit more depth. 

After my rating I will talk a bit about the plot twist of the book in red and cursive font and my thoughts on that. If you haven't yet read the book and still want to, just stop reading after my rating. :) 

CONCLUSION

Sadly, I was really disappointed in this book. I was super excited to read it because I love Adam Silvera's Instagram and just thought that I had these two jewels of books in my shelf that I couldn't wait to read.. and then I had no fun in reading it at all. The book really dragged me down a lot and gave me a very unhappy and exhausting reading experience that made me want to finish the book as quickly as possible so that I could move on to a better book but also was very hard to read because I really didn't like the main character.

I have now very lowered expectations for the other Adam Silvera book that I own - They Both Die At The End - and have no interest in reading it any time soon. I just want to have a good time while reading a book and although I have nothing against books that make me emotional, I don't like books that only make me feel depressed throughout the whole book. 

RATING

I award this book with 2,5 out of 5 stars.

SPOILER

WARNING

There's a plot twist in the book that I already hinted at in my review but want to just quickly talk about a bit more here. 

Rather towards the end of the book, there's this sudden revelation of what's been secretly going on between Griffin and Wade. And that was quite interesting to learn about but also confused me a lot because Griffin had acted absolutely cold and awful towards Wade - basically throughout the whole book. And he was always only completely obsessed with Theo. And then Jackson appeared and I really started to ship them because they had this understandable unique connection with each other because of their shared pain and they also had chemistry. And so to suddenly bring Wade into the picture and make him and Griffin have had this weird friendship plus thing was really strange to me. It was thrown into the story and didn't feel right at all. Jackson and Griffin had this development and although it was obviously weird that these two would come together, it definitely felt like the author was clearly building up to that. There was so much time invested in building a bond between the two - and then to just suddenly make Griffin not have any feelings for Jackson but have this history with Wade, felt very much like a spontaneous decision of the author who wanted to change things in the very last minute. 

I mean, since the book felt so dragging to me, it was a nice change to suddenly have this plot twist that I hadn't seen coming - but I also didn't really like it.

I liked Wade and the way that he treated Griffin but I just felt more resentment towards Griffin then because how badly he had treated Wade after now knowing what had happened between them. Griffin had grown a tiny bit on me through his unlikely bonding with Jackson - because that had forced him to overthink his hatred towards Jackson. But when I then saw how he treated Wade, I just lost any respect for him completely. Griffin is somebody that I really would not want to have as a friend. And he also felt like the complete opposite to what Adam Silvera comes across to be like on Instagram.