Summary
NOW A NETFLIX FILM, STARRING ELLE FANNING AND JUSTICE SMITH!
The New York Times bestselling love story about two teens who find each other while standing on the edge. And d on't miss Take Me with You When You Go , Jennifer Niven's highly anticipated new book with bestselling author David Levithan!
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death. Every day he thinks of ways he might kill himself, but every day he also searches for--and manages to find-- something to keep him here, and alive, and awake.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her small Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school--six stories above the ground-- it's unclear who saves whom. Soon it's only with Violet that Finch can be himself. And it's only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink. . . .
"A do-not-miss for fans of Eleanor & Park and The Fault in Our Stars , and basically anyone who can breathe." --Justine Magazine
"At the heart--a big one--of All the Bright Places lies a charming love story about this unlikely and endearing pair of broken teenagers." --The New York Times Book Review
"A heart-rending , stylish love story." -- The Wall Street Journal
"A complex love story that will bring all the feels ." -- Seventeen Magazine
" Impressively layered, lived-in, and real ." --Buzzfeed
Author Notes
Jennifer Niven writes both fiction and nonfiction books. Her novels for adults include American Blonde, Becoming Clementine, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, and Velva Jean Learns to Drive. Her first book for young adult readers, All the Bright Places, was published in 2015. Holding Up the Universe is her second young adult book. Her nonfiction books include The Ice Master, Ada Blackjack, and The Aqua-Net Diaries.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Violet Markey is on the ledge of her school's bell tower, six stories up, and frozen in terror. Theodore Finch, the Freak, stands on the ledge nearby. Before she can panic, he calms her down and gets her back on solid ground. He even lets everyone think she's the one who talked him out of jumping. Violet, until recently, was a popular cheerleader and Finch has a well-earned reputation for being manic, violent, and unpredictable. But Finch won't let their encounter rest. He's suddenly everywhere Violet goes and even signs her up as his partner on a "Wander the State" school project. As the two drive around Indiana, Violet begins to see the lame tourist attractions through Finch's eyes, and each spot becomes something unique and special. He pushes and challenges the protagonist, and seems to understand the effect her sister's death made on her. But though Violet begins to recover from the devastating grief that has cocooned her for almost a year, Finch's demons refuse to let go. The writing in this heartrending novel is fluid, despite the difficult topics, as Niven relays the complex thought processes of the two teens. Finch and Violet, with their emotional turmoil and insecurities, will ring true to teens. Finch in particular will linger in readers' minds long after the last page is turned. Give this to fans of Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park (St. Martin's Pr., 2013), John Green's The Fault in Our Stars (Dutton, 2012), or Jennifer Hubbard's The Secret Year (Viking, 2010).-Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Voice actors Heyborne and Meyers team up for the audio edition of Niven's teen love story. Last spring, Violet survived the car accident that killed her sister. She has been barely getting by, and now, on the first day of the new term, she has climbed the bell tower at school and is thinking of throwing herself off. It is here that Violet encounters Theodore Finch, better known as "Freak" around school, who manages to talk her down. Saving Violet seems to have given Finch a new lease on life. He woos her, gets assigned to be her partner for a class project, and slowly brings Violet back to life. Both Violet and Finch take turns telling their story. Heyborne makes Finch sound warm, relatable, and sympathetic. When Finch turns manic, Heyborne picks up the pace, and his voice becomes frantic, harried, and ragged. For Violet, Meyers's voice is sharp and tight, almost pinched at times. She only sounds loose and comfortable when she's with Finch. When bad things happen and Violet's voice is cracking and near tears, listeners will become misty-eyed as well. Still, the story is not without humor, and the narrators nail the comedic notes, lightening the mood. This is an emotional book, and Meyers and Heyborne do an outstanding job infusing their performances with sentiment and warmth. Ages 14-up. A Knopf hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Theodore Finch, a moody "freak," and Violet Markey, mourning her sister's death, meet on their school's bell tower, both flirting with jumping. When they partner on a project to discover the wonders of Indiana, a tentative relationship begins. Told in distinct alternating voices, this novel will affect readers as much with its charming romance as with its heartbreaking portrayal of mental illness. (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love. Violet, a writer and member of the popular crowd, has withdrawn from her friends and from school activities since her sister died in a car accident nine months earlier. Finch, known to his classmates as "Theodore Freak," is famously impulsive and eccentric. Following their meeting in the school bell tower, Finch makes it his mission to re-engage Violet with the world, partially through a school project that sends them to offbeat Indiana landmarks and partially through simple persistence. (Violet and Finch live, fortunately for all involved, in the sort of romantic universe where his throwing rocks at her window in the middle of the night comes off more charming than stalker-esque.) The teens alternate narration chapter by chapter, each in a unique and well-realized voice. Finch's self-destructive streak and suicidal impulses are never far from the surface, and the chapters he narrates are interspersed with facts about suicide methods and quotations from Virginia Woolf and poet Cesare Pavese. When the story inevitably turns tragic, a cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others. Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably. (Fiction. 14 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Violet and Finch meet on the ledge of their school's clock tower, both thinking about jumping. For frenetic Finch, who constantly alters his appearance, suicide is often on his mind, and the barrage of bullying he receives, from his classmates and his own father, doesn't help matters. Violet, on the other hand, is in a daze after the untimely death of her sister. They don't jump, but their chance meeting leads to a partnership on a geography project visiting Indiana roadside oddities. Their friendship grows into a sweet romance, and Violet feels invigorated she starts feeling engaged with her life and even takes up writing again, something she gave up after her sister died. Despite Finch's desperate desire, their burgeoning love is not enough to solve his wild, emotional ups and downs, behavior that's not called what it is bipolar disorder until very late in the novel. Niven's first novel for teens tackles a big topic with sensitivity (suicide-prevention resources are included), and teens will likely swoon over Finch and Violet's doomed oddball romance. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: With an author tour, a major promotional campaign, and a film adaptation already in the works, publishers are banking on Niven's YA debut to be a hit.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN THE OPENING moments of Jennifer Niven's "All the Bright Places," a 12th grader named Theodore Finch poses on the narrow sixth-story ledge of his school's bell tower, arms extended, welcoming the spectators below to his death scene. And then he notices the popular Violet Markey on the same ledge, terrified, thinking about taking a leap of her own. These kids have some issues. While Violet is looking for any small reason to live (and she ultimately finds it in Finch), death-obsessed, bipolar Finch is having a hard time finding a reason not to die. His quest has begun to feel impossible, since everything in the world comes with what he calls a "built-in ending." At the heart - a big one - of "All the Bright Places" lies a charming love story about this unlikely and endearing pair of broken teenagers. Violet has been shattered by the death of her older sister, while Finch is hated at school. (The reasons are never entirely clear: He's charismatic, musically talented and poetic. He can recite Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" as well as ancient Vedic hymns.) Yet despite his wounds, Finch manages to repair Violet's fractures - he gets her to drive again after the accident that took her sister's life, and to return to her abandoned passion, writing. And yes, they also have lots of sex. If Violet and Finch are an improbable couple, their relationship thrives in the environment of a most improbable high school. While their widely observed suicide attempts barely register with school officials, and Finch is labeled by a cyberbullying gossip website the No. 1 suicide risk at Bartlett High School (a place where boys can get away with cigarette smoking during gym class as the teacher looks on), Violet and Finch earn an afterschool detention for being tardy one time to class. So apparently, at Bartlett High you can smoke, attempt suicide and conduct online hate campaigns against your classmates as long as you're not late to U.S. Geography. It is for a geography class assignment that Finch and Violet embark on a journey to see all the bright and quirky places Indiana offers them, and these wanderings provide some of the novel's finest moments: climbing to the top of the Purina Tower on a starlit night, visiting a field of retired bookmobiles and making a trip up Hoosier Hill - at 1,257 feet above sea level, the highest point in the state. After stopping by the home of a man who builds his own backyard roller coasters, Finch succumbs to his love for Violet, kissing her for the first time: "The air around us feels charged and electric, like if you were to strike a match, the air, the car, Violet, me - everything might just explode." In Finch and Violet, Niven, an accomplished author of adult fiction and nonfiction, has created two characters who burn brightly at the story's gleaming center. And yet I can't help wishing the surrounding structures of the novel were as solidly built. The couple seem to be swarmed by mothlike secondary characters who congeal into background noise: Violet's incredibly perfect ex-boyfriend, the mean girl Violet is supposed to be friends with but doesn't really like and, of course, the over-the-top bully, a guy known as Roamer, whose mission in life, evidently, is to torment Theodore Finch. And although Finch is determined to mend and reinvigorate Violet, he makes it painfully clear he wants none of that healing potion in return. He proclaims to Violet that he is not "a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I'm a person." And he adds, "I bet by now you're pretty sorry you picked that particular ledge that particular day." Violet is not sorry. She falls hard for Finch. Having my own 17-year-old daughter, I was not enthralled by the "rumpled outcast teenage boy saves the broken teenage girl" motif, and I had a difficult time with the unlikely, and unaddressed, negligence in Niven's depiction of the school setting. Still, it seems inevitable that "All the Bright Places" will be compared to Rainbow Rowell's "Eleanor & Park" and John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars," and deservedly so, at least in the case of its central characters. Violet and Finch are the archetypal offering in contemporary young adult fiction: a pair of damaged, heart-tugging teenagers who are at once outcasts and isolated, trapped by the dissonant alchemy of their combined fates. ANDREW SMITH is the author of several young adult novels, including "100 Sideways Miles," a semifinalist for the 2014 National Book Award for young people's literature.