All The Bright Places Review

In Summary

We meet Theodore Finch and Violet Markey as they both stand on the ledge of their high school bell tower, both in a state of mind to leap and leave everything behind. Violet, who has just lost her best friend and sister by car accident; Finch, who has only ever lived loss. But instead of jumping, Finch helps Violet down when she wakes up to what she’s doing and almost falls anyway. But because of their reputations at school, the student body believes Violet is the one who saved Finch.  

Violet has always been the popular girl, with a once successful webzine, a stuck-up gossipy friend group and the most popular guy in school as her boyfriend. Finch, on the hand, has always been the weirdo. He changes his look seemingly every week, he disappears for days and weeks at a time, and no one ever seems to know what to expect from him. 

Finch speaks to his school counselor when he comes off the ledge and once again elects to lie and obfuscate instead of being sincere. He does, however, set his sights on Violet, who he is determined to make alright. In the one class they have together, he forces her into a partnership on a project that is due by the end of the school year on at least two noteworthy places in Indiana. Violet tries to get out of it, as she has done for every major assignment since her sister’s death, but can no longer manage it — which means she is stuck doing this project with Finch. 

Finch resolves to impress Violet and be someone she could actually fall for, and Violet resolves to keep Finch an arm’s distance away. Instead, they both drop the act. Violet opens up about her sister’s death and how she feels responsible, and Finch begins just being himself, instead of who he thinks Violet would like. Violet starts riding in cars and writing again, which she hasn’t done since the accident. Finch thinks about suicide less and more about how to be happy. 

In classic unpredictable Finch fashion, he has found way more than just two places to visit for the project and makes a whole list he and Violet have to see. He calls them “wanderings”. With each place the two of them mark on their map they also leave something behind to be remembered by. Things come to a head when Violet and Finch succumb to the feelings they have for each other after a trip to a bottomless water pool. They stay the night at a tower nearby, which sends Violet’s parents into a frenzy of worry. By the time the two of them make their way back the next day the damage has been done, Finch and Violet are forbidden from seeing each other. 

Finch’s behavior starts becoming more erratic than before, more depressive, more unpredictable. His school counselor notes this behavior and tells Finch he may have bipolar disorder, upsetting him. After snapping at one of the bullies in Violet’s circle and choking him within an inch of his life, Finch is expelled — which sends him further down his spiral. He takes a bunch of sleeping pills and almost immediately regrets it. He rushes to the hospital to get his stomach pumped when he can't throw them up and leaves before he can be held there on a psychiatric hold. Instead, he makes his way 25 miles out to a suicide prevention group called Life is Life to get help without running into anyone he knows. 

There he sees one of Violet’s friends, Amanda, who tells him he can't tell anyone they know about seeing her there, to which he agrees. Finch looks down on the others there and thinks to himself “If I actually attempted to commit suicide, I wouldn't miss”. 

Being a depressed teen felt exactly like this. From the constant onslaught of loneliness to the deep, dark blackness that pulls you under until there’s no way to breathe or be.

Violet is getting increasingly concerned about Finch’s erratic behavior but doesn’t know how to help him because she technically isn’t even supposed to be seeing him. Every time she tries to have a conversation about how he’s doing, Finch changes the subject. He does confide in Violet that he’s been staying in his closet and leaving it as little as possible because he can “think better” in there. Violet tries to understand but only becomes more concerned. Amanda then tells Violet that she saw Finch at a suicide prevention group where he talked about swallowing pills and ending up in the hospital. On his birthday, Violet confronts him with her newfound information and they get into an argument. 

After their argument, Violet comes clean to her parents about Finch and tells them that she’s worried about his well-being. Her parents call a psychiatrist and all three try to get through to Finch’s mother to get Finch help but ultimately end up failing. Finch then packs up and leaves home. When Violet reaches out, he stops answering. Once two days have passed Violet wants to go to the police, but Finch’s family stops her. His mother and sister explain that Finch isn't missing because he’s checked in with them and disappearing from time to time is just what he does. 

Mrs. Finch has let her divorce carve her hollow, to where she no longer notes nor cares where her children are, what they’re doing, or if they’re safe.

Finch begins leaving Violet cryptic texts while still not responding to her desperate pleas of “where are you?” and “are you okay?”. After a while, Violet stops looking for answers and moves on. The texts stop. When about a month of radio silence passes, Finch’s sister Kate comes to Violet and says the last message she’s gotten from Finch isn’t right and asks her if she knows where he is. This resparks Violet’s worry and she goes looking for him again in the messages he sent her. Violet eventually finds a clue in Finch’s bedroom and his mother tells her to follow up on it alone just in case he’s...gone. 

Violet makes her way back to the bottomless water pool and there she finds his car and all of Finch’s missing belongings from his room. She calls the police, and in that water, they find his body. Finch’s death sends Violet spiraling all over again, reeling from yet another loss so close to the last one. In an effort to still feel close to him, Violet decides to go to the last few places on Finch’s “wanderings” map and finds that the cryptic texts he sent her before he died correlate to the places they were supposed to see together, and that he's left things behind at each place like they used to. Violet finds closure in this, and as she visits the last place he designated, she resolves to honor the memories that they made together. 

Review 

I wasn’t sure about this book at first. One of the first things that struck me was how Finch’s best friend Charlie was introduced: “Charlie was Black, not CW Black, but Black-Black”. And as a Black person, I still have no idea what the hell that’s supposed to mean, nor do I think I want to. It felt so crass. However, I’m of two minds on this matter: 

1. Being blunt and clear about a character’s race makes it less likely that their identities will be erased by the reader and/or the people who adapt the book into visual media, but 

2. Singling out characters of color in a way that no other characters are described feels akin to othering. As if this character is wholly different than the White characters who get much more detailed and delicate descriptions that aren't tied only to skin color or race. Like their being is worth less mentioning because it’s standard. 

   
   

It’s something I am constantly reminded of in books where POCs exist and are somewhat essential to the plot and I’m still not quite sure what the solution to the issue is. I do know, however, that the solution definitely is NOT whatever the hell “CW Black” is. This coupled with several f-slurs  and off-putting feelings about girls within the first few chapters, and I had one foot mentally out the door. But something kept me reading and I think I know what it is, now that I’ve finished the book: familiarity. 

I’ve been depressed for more of my life than I haven’t. Started at 9 and still pulls at me from time to time now, and I can tell you being a depressed teen felt exactly like this. From the constant onslaught of loneliness to the deep, dark blackness that pulls you under until there’s no way to breathe or be. It feels real and familiar, and so does the secrecy and shame Finch had about it. How he squirreled away his feelings and danced around questions and labels.  

Seeing the duality of it, seeing how suicide makes one victim AND perpetrator; how one role does not exist alone in its endeavor.

The writing feels vivid and immersive while also incredibly expressive. It feels as if everything that happens in the story has happened directly to Niven, and in the author’s note it’s clear why — because it has. That real life experience is poured onto the page in something that is uniquely beautiful and gut wrenching. And while I was iffy on the story even halfway through, I always say the ending is what determines a good story and Niven stuck the landing.  I’m not the type of person that needs a happy ending to be satisfied with a book (although I do love a good one) but I do want the ending to tie everything together and make me feel something, and this ending crushed me. Because Finch is so flawed, interesting and full of life you want him to make it through and survive somehow, even when everyone seems sure he’s dead. Even when they describe how his body was found. Even when they’re going to his funeral, you still think “well maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was someone else, someone else’s tragedy. Someone else’s disaster”. Niven really captures what loss feels like and its many faces. 

While Finch hadn’t lost something as tangible as Violet had with her sister dying, you do see how much he’s lost. He’s lost his parents in their divorce and subsequent abuse he faced (which we’ll come back to), his sister in how she’s had to become his parent, his sense of security, even his body in how he’s constantly beat up and attacked for just existing and daring to be himself (and not for any of his uncouth feelings about Black people or women). Everything is lost. And when you see things that way, through how he’s begun to see the world, it’s all too easy and all too sad to see why he felt there was no other way out than diving into a different world. 

He didn’t know how to accept help and in the end that’s what killed him. Because of what he was taught growing up he could never allow himself to give up control because his decisions were all he had left. Towards the end of the book, Violet wrestles with the terminology “suicide victim”, and I think that’s what the heart of Finch is. To see the duality of it, to see how suicide makes one victim AND perpetrator; how one role does not exist alone in its endeavor. Everything about the portrayal of depression and suicidal ideation feels real and accurate, and it feels like this accuracy is what makes the story so potent and important, despite its very clear shortcomings. Even its depiction of abuse and hereditary mental illness feels life-like. 

All of these pieces from the demented puzzle that is Finch’s life come together to makes this gut-wrenching awful picture of a life Finch ultimately did not think was worth living

Finch’s father is hinted to be bipolar and where Finch got his disorder from. He springs from happy days where he acts as if nothing terrible he’s done to his family has any effect and everything is grand, to angry, wallowing, short-fused, abuser. While it’s important to point out that abuse and mental illness do not have to coincide nor does mental illness cause abuse, it’s also important to recognize that depression manifests differently in different people. It is common for men, especially those who believe in traditional masculinity like Finch’s father, to express depression in rage rather than sorrow — another point to research and accuracy on Niven’s part.  

Mrs. Finch has let her divorce carve her hollow, to where she no longer notes nor cares where her children are, what they’re doing, or if they’re safe. This is child neglect — which in and of itself is abuse. Because she is so checked out of her own home, Finch’s older sister Kate is left to pick up the slack and take care of her younger siblings, leaving her parentified and without a childhood. Because Kate is a child herself, who has no experience or help in parenting, she sucks at taking care of Finch, leaving Finch to eventually learn he is completely and utterly alone, and exacerbating his already constant depressive episodes. 

Finch’s home life is so dysfunctional and broken that his mother doesn’t know he’s been expelled, that his school counselor thinks Finch is bipolar and suicidal, or even that he painted his room blue in a manic episode weeks, maybe even months, ago at the time of him being “truly missing”. Even when he leaves home with no clear intention of ever coming back, Finch’s mother just...handwaves it, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world and there’s no need to be concerned. She can’t even bring herself to be there for her son when she thinks he might be dead. All of these pieces from the demented puzzle that is Finch’s life come together to makes this gut-wrenching awful picture of a life Finch ultimately did not think was worth living. Niven does not shy away from this as she doesn’t for any possibly controversial topic present in the narrative: survivor's guilt, mental illness, suicide, toxic coping mechanisms. All of them get equal treatment and care in the story in a way that doesn't feel hamfisted or forced, but intentional. But for as intentionally these topics were handled, there was major spot where Niven missed the mark — and it once again comes down to the weird comments about minority groups. 

I think Niven could have done a way better job at marking Finch’s clearly pretentious feelings/thoughts and Violet’s self-blame as wrong to the reader, however. It’s very common for depressed teens to go one of two ways:  

1. overly empathetic, feeling everything around them so much it hurts; like they’re taking the world’s burdens on their shoulders and being crushed by the weight. 

2. Pretentious, apathetic, calloused. As if they know secrets about the world nobody else knows and therefore everyone else is beneath them because they’re “deep” and “special”. 

Finch and Violet obviously fall into the latter to varying degrees, with Finch on the extreme end of the scale. Since Finch is extreme, so are his thoughts about others. Violet’s former friends are beneath him because they’re dumb and mediocre. The kids at the suicide prevention group are beneath him because they're labeled with mental illnesses and their attempts at suicide are pathetic. His school counselor is beneath him because he doesn’t know when Finch lies and thinks he needs to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. His teacher is beneath him because he’s fat and audibly breathes. He clearly has a superiority complex, but instead of leaning into why he’s wrong to think and feel these things, Niven plays it a bit too straight, with little to no pushback on these ideas. Violet seems to be the only check he has against these things, and she doesn’t do much to assuage it. 

And Violet’s little speech to her parents after Finch dies about how it’s partially their fault for banning her from speaking with him that is in no way really addressed really stuck out to me as another reason why the themes of the story really get lost for some readers, and for good reason. 

Finch’s character makes for a painful story, with more hurt than happy, but it’s a tale as old as time, which makes me want to give it 5 stars. BUT the weirdness around race, gender and queer identity are real sticking points for me. Even after giving the narrative time to really percolate in my brain, I keep going back to how weird the language around Charlie was whenever he showed up in the narrative or how slurs were thrown around with little rhyme or reason and it really bothers me. I understand that these are the thoughts of a depressed teen, but in trying to make an authentic, “progressive teen” voice in Finch and “bigoted teen” voice in his bullies, the message gets undermined and diluted. This kind of fake progressivism is boring and downright insulting, and for that this book gets capped at

4 stars.