This semester, I have been able to publish an analytical paper in my university’s literary journal, I have presented my book exchange project from last semester at an academic conference, and I have landed a great internship at a museum! Things are somewhat coming together, but I have also encountered many problems along the way. I have learned a lot of life lessons, such as to be careful in whom you trust and help. Most importantly, I learned that not everyone deserves your kindness because some will take advantage of it. Also, I learned to be careful in who I choose to be friends with. I realized that not many college students are at that mature age where they should treat people with respect and value a good friend, but instead, dispose friends and friendships because they found someone new to be friends with. It astounds me how immature some college students can be, but not all the time does college mature people into upright adults. My goal for next semester is to focus on myself and to be accepting or be okay with being alone, and to find happiness in my own solitude. Sometimes it’s for the better.
But without further ado, I am just going to briefly give a quick book review on a recent read that I finished (weeks ago). I finished History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera. It is a Young Adult (YA) novel that focuses on a story of teen-love, heartbreak and sorrow. The book is about a teenage boy, Griffin, and his boyfriend/ex-boyfriend, Theo, who dies in a drowning accident. The story (or history) is told through Griffin’s perspective, and is also told in a series of flashbacks or memories that Griffin has of Theo. After learning about the death of Theo, Griffin becomes a lost soul, consumed with sorrow and sadness over the loss of both his friend and former lover.
Living seems impossible to Griffin, nothing feels the same or is the same after losing Theo, even if they had broken up and even though Theo had found someone else to love. This leads Griffin to go into a destructive path of inner emotional battles and upheaval. Eventually, Griffin accepts Theo’s death, but it was a journey and a struggle to get there. At the beginning, he finds solace in Theo’s boyfriend, Jackson. In this unforeseen friendship, the duo try to heal each other’s wounds—but it leads Griffin to uncover untold histories about the life Theo led after the break up and other secrets, hence leading Griffin to enter another realm of different kinds of emotional complexities.
Many people have praised the book for capturing the raw emotions of first love and heartbreak, but I do not know if I entirely agree. Although I love how authors try to make their characters flawed in order to make them feel real to readers, Griffin, and all of the characters in the book, were beyond flawed; they were so flawed, it came off as somewhat agitating. I do not know if it was Silvera’s intention to make Griffin into a whiny teenage boy, who feels that he is the only person entitled to grieve and can, therefore, act and behave the way he wants to because he lost his ex-boyfriend. I felt that Silvera was just going a tad overboard about the array of emotions Griffin was going through and his behavior, which I found hard to read through at times because it felt exaggerated or overdone. I do like how Silvera captured how complicated humans can be, which is definitely relayed through Griffin. It is hard to find the right words to convey how I feel about the book and what I dislike the most, but it mostly centers on Griffin’s personality and how he deals with the loss of Theo.
It was a decent read, but I was not in love with it. I think Silvera is a fantastic writer and I look forward to reading more books from him in the near future.
x, Kayla
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