Friday 13 March 2015

All the Bright Places Review









Spoiler Free

All the Bright Places is a romantic novel by Jennifer Niven. I discovered this book while perusing through amazon and decided to buy it along with a few others. To start with I had no idea who the author was so I have done some background information. Overall she has written 8 books ranging from nonfiction and fiction, both historical and contemporary, adult and YA. All of her books are very different and as I was looking her up she had said "all my books are all over the map, but if you look closely they share a common theme: they are stories about ordinary people doing extraordinary things." At this moment in time I am trying to multitask but its definitely not working, listening to music and trying to type is not the best idea and I have had to go back twice now because I typed out the lyrics... Anyway back to the review, I knew straight away I was going to like the story to this book, give me a romance over action any day.  I had heard a lot of good things about this and it just appealed to me, I like books that make me think over everything when I'm finished or leave me feeling completely lost.

Violet Markey (the protagonist) is devastated by the death of her sister and Theodore Finch well he’s basically obsessed with death. They meet on the bell tower at their school both wanting to jump but in fact end up saving each other. How far will Violet go to save the one she loves?

When I first started reading this I felt as though it was just another Fault in Our Stars hype but for me it definitely wasn't. I felt as though I could connect with the characters a lot more and because of this I got attached to them and actually cried more than I did with John Green's overly hyped book, but that's another matter. I have read some comments on goodreads and some said that this book is glamorizing suicide which kind of upset me a little because if you read the authors notes at the end it actually tells you what inspired to write these characters and it does involve personal experiences.  

The book is set in the state of Indiana, America and the characters both attend High School. Before they meet on the bell tower they had never really spoken to each other before and actually belong to different groups inside the school. "Theodore Freak" is what Finch (he tends to be called "Finch" throughout the book) is nicknamed by the group that Violet belongs to although she hasn't really been herself since the accident and therefore doesn't quite fit in anymore. 
Their relationship is quite rocky at the start and it can sometimes feel like Finch is stalking her but Violet ends up falling for the mysterious boy and they have to be one of my favourite book couples. I was "awwing" the whole way through and the chemistry between the two characters was undeniable. 

The disappointments in this book for me were the other characters. They lacked the likability and didn't leave much of an impression on me. However saying that I think it was necessary as otherwise there would have been too much to focus on. 

Overall this book left me feeling like I had been stranded on a desert island for days, it really messed with my emotions and made me think about how lucky my life truly is. I think this book is good for anyone who likes quite an intense read because it’s definitely not a quick read. As much as I loved this book, for me I'm very fed up with the same format in the romance genre. They always seem to try and make characters so different and intelligent when to be quite honest I would like to read a book about average people, at least then I can sort of hope it would happen to me. I have decided to give this book a 9/10, because I loved the characters and the start of the book but the ending was a little disappointing.  




Charlotte 


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