History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera Book Review

Summary: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.

Rating:5/5 stars

My Thoughts:

Plot:

Ever since I read More Happy Than Not last year, I have been eagerly anticipating the release of this book.Silvera is one of those authors that you read one book of theirs and you instantly know that they’re going to become a favorite. While History is All You Left Me wasn’t quite as good as his debut novel it was still amazing and gave me all the feels.

So this story is told from the perspective of Griffin who has just lost his ex-boyfriend,Theo, in a drowning accident. Griffin is confused and doesn’t really know what to do, and is trying to deal with all the grief he’s suffering from.Help comes in the most unexpected of forms from Jackson-Theo’s current boyfriend before he died. The story alternates between “History”-Griffin’s past with Theo- and “Today” as Griffin deals with the loss of the first love of his life.

This book was honestly so amazing and is such an important read that discusses important topics as grief,mental illness and sexuality, and the author handled each topic so extremely well.

I absolutely loved the way the grief was portrayed and how it was very raw and accurate, and he really showed all the mixed emotions that Griffin felt and there were times were Griffin made bad decisions but things like this are natural when people are grieving. We also saw how one oftentimes feels guilt in such situations and while it is something that is talked about a lot I still thinks it’s important.

One thing that I’ve seen some reviewers say is the fact that the OCD wasn’t developed enough and it didn’t as though griffin “actually had OCD” which is kind of gross considering the fact that Adam Silvera has OCD himself and Griffin is similar to himself. Just because the character doesn’t follow your idea of what the mental illness is like doesn’t mean it’s an inaccurate portrayal. I for one felt that the representation was very authentic and it was really well developed. Silvera did an excellent job in terms of the mental illness representation.

As with Silvera’s previous novel, he discussed the subject of sexuality with ease. I love how like basically all the characters were gay or bi which is just great. and it was also a very natural thing like “yo I’m gay” and it was kind of just not a big deal at all.I also thought it was so important how they talked about safe sex which is something I’ve never seen in a book featuring LGBT characters, it was really great.

Characters:

I absolutely loved Griffin and he was such a relatable character and I love his geekiness and really just everything about him was great and I felt as though he was such a realistic character who was really going through a rough patch so while we saw Griffin’s kind of darker side, we also saw  his past self before Theo died.

I also really liked Theo and while he’s dead we did get to see a lot of him in the “History” part which was really great. I think that Theo was a good character who made some mistakes like all teens do, but with an overall good heart.

One character that I feel like needed a lot more development was that of Wade. He’s the third wheel of Theo’s and Griffin’s friendship and while I did like what I saw, I felt like we could’ve seen a little bit more of him. I like how he appeared more at the end and how everything turned out in the end.

I wasn’t a huge fan of Jackson, and while I found his motivations interesting, I just didn’t really like him as person so it was more a personal thing but I do think that he was very important to the story.