All The Bright Places

“The thing I realize is that it's not what you take, it’s what you leave.”

Year after year, January comes with two things: making a resolution to change something in your life, and then remembering how hard it can be to change your life. But, how hard is it to change someone else’s life?

All the Bright Places, published in 2015 and the first novel written by author Jennifer Niven, follows Violet Markey and Theodore Finch as their lives intertwine together. (In 2020, All the Bright Places was also made into a movie! It stars Elle Fanning and Justice Smith, and is available to watch on Netflix.) 

For Violet, her past haunts her. For Finch, the future terrifies him. Despite being nothing more than classmates at the beginning of the book, the universe forces them together in an unusual way, and they help each other finally focus on the present. 

All the Bright Places is everything great about the YA genre: relatable characters, a coming-of-age story, an important focus on mental health, and an ending that will leave you somehow simultaneously content with how things are left and wanting more. Niven writes both Violet and Finch so that their flaws are just as personal and realistic as their strengths. As the reader, you follow the ups and downs of their relationship as they help each other find joy and beauty in even the smallest aspects of life. You learn and mature with both of them, and in my experience, the book even inspired me to find new details in my own life to appreciate. All the Bright Places is a book that teaches you to slow down, take a deep breath, and cherish the now. The themes of mental illness and struggles are handled in a way that's both delicate and genuine; however, if you are struggling, I would recommend looking up a content warning before reading! Despite some of the darker subject matter within the book, All the Bright Places is a story about how surprisingly beautiful life can be when you stop and see it for what it truly is. It’s a story about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and seeing that no matter what, there are people who care about you and want to see you succeed, that no matter what, there are bright places.

“...and I think of my own epitaph, still to be written, and all the places I’ll wander. No longer rooted, but gold, flowing. I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me.”