Just finished
All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, a YA contemporary novel that's been getting a lot of hype, having been compared to
The Fault in our Stars and
Eleanor and Park, both of which I loved. This... I did not love. It's the story of two teenagers who are both struggling with mental illness and suicidal ideation. They partner up to take on a school project, and find themselves becoming closer, despite coming from different backgrounds.
This is a pretty big spoiler:
Spoiler:
I hated the way Finch's depression and eventual suicide was used to facilitate Violet's character progression. I didn't like Violet to begin with, and it didn't make me appreciate her any more that the author chose to have every single character fail to help in any meaningful way the character with mental illness so that she could recover from her bereavement. There's totally another way this story could have gone, and the author, I feel, made the wrong choice. The message just seems to me so hopeless. Violet is suicidal because of grief, not mental illness, and therefore she can be saved, but Finch is mentally ill, and therefore he cannot? I'd much rather have seen a story develop between him and Amanda, the cheerleader with bulimia, of mutual understanding of different mental illnesses, rather than this nonsense where he has to die because he's too special for this world and Violet needs to move on? Argh.
Between that and Alexander McCall Smith's lacklustre retelling of
Emma, I've had a couple of duffers in a row. Hopefully on to better things!