History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

So I thought I should start this review by stating that I'm not the biggest contemporary fan; anyone who knows my reading habits knows this about me. When I crack open a book, I want to enter another world, I want something fantastical, magical, and surreal, and contemporaries rarely achieve any of these things for me. It's not that contemporaries are bad; it just comes down to personal taste. So it takes a very special contemporary novel for me to truly be engaged in the story and characters, and this book does just that! It was wonderful!

This story follows our main protagonist named Griffin who is dealing with the devastating aftermath of his ex-boyfriend, Theo's, death. During Theo's funeral, Griffin comes face to face with Theo's current boyfriend, Jackson, and Griffin soon realizes that as much as he wants to hate Jackson for stealing away the love of his life, Jackson is essentially the only other person who understands his feelings of grief over the death of the boy they both loved.

From this synopsis alone, we can already tell that this is a very sad and emotional book, and that's true for the most part. But what makes this book stand out from the typical "finding-yourself after grief" trope is the dual timeline. We switch back and forth between the present after Theo's death and the past during Griffin's relationship with Theo. This way, Theo's death is a lot more effective at conveying the emotion to the reader since we get to know his character over the course of the novel. This is also a good idea since the main premise packs quite the emotional punch that it needs to be balanced out with some happiness and cutesy-contemporary moments, and we get that in the past-timeline chapters when we see Griffin and Theo falling in love and developing their relationship. This is also an effective way to keep the reader engaged in the story; I truly felt like I was going through an emotional-whiplash while reading this. One moment, I would be laughing and feeling elated over the cuteness, and the next I would be wanting to cry because the previous chapter would make me forget that Theo was still dead.

The writing style was also great and poetically written. I truly felt like I was in the head of Griffin and I could feel and sympathize with everything he was going through. He was a deeply complex and flawed character, but I completely understood his actions and why he sometimes chose to behave in questionable ways. This novel touches on the complexity of love and relationships, and how not everything is always so black and white.

Overall, I would give this book a 4.5 out of 5 stars. The only minor flaw that I had with it was something that was revealed towards the end between two characters that felt a little like an afterthought. It caught me off guard and left me wondering if it was even necessary to the story and the character development. But it only bothered me a little bit and didn't really affect my overall enjoyment of this story. Like I said, it takes a lot for me to truly love and be engaged in a contemporary novel, so the fact that I loved this book as much as I did says a lot about how great it is!

I will definitely be picking up Adam Silvera's next book "They Both Die at the End". I think he's a very talented writer and I immensely love his characters and writing-style. I have a feeling that this is going to be an author that kills me on the inside with his books.

I'm looking forward to it.