All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven, 2015
Random House
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385755887
Summary
An exhilarating and heart-wrenching love story about a girl who learns to live from a boy who intends to die.
Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.
Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.
When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the "natural wonders" of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.
This is an intense, gripping novel perfect for fans of Gayle Forman, Jay Asher, Rainbow Rowell, John Green, and Jenny Downham from a talented new voice in YA, Jennifer Niven.
Soon to be a major motion picture starring Elle Fanning! (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 14, 1969 (?)
• Raised—Richmond, Indiania, USA
• Education—B.A., Drew University; American Film Institute
• Awards—Emmy Award (screenwriting); Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize (Italy)
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
With the publication of her first book in 2000, The Ice Master, Jennifer became a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writer. A nonfiction account of a deadly Arctic expedition, the book was named one of the top ten nonfiction books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, and translated into multiple languages.
Jennifer and The Ice Master appeared in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Talk, Glamour, The New Yorker, Outside, The New York Times Book Review, London Daily Mail, London Times, and Writer's Digest, among others. Dateline BBC, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel all featured The Ice Master as hour-long documentaries, and the book was the subject of numerous European television documentaries. The book has been nominated for awards by the American Library Association and Book Sense, and received Italy's esteemed Gambrinus Giuseppe Mazzotti Prize for 2002.
Jennifer's second book, Ada Blackjack—an inspiring true story of the woman the press called "the female Robinson Crusoe"—has also been translated into multiple languages, was a Book Sense Top Ten Pick, and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the Top Five Arctic books.
Her memoir, The Aqua-Net Diaries: Big Hair, Big Dreams, Small Town, was published in 2010 and optioned by Warner Bros. as a television series.
Her first novel, Velva Jean Learns to Drive (based on her Emmy Award-winning film of the same name), was released in 2009, becoming an Indie Pick for the August 2009 Indie Next List and also a Costco Book of the Month. The second book in the Velva Jean series, Velva Jean Learns to Fly, was released in 2011, the third book, Becoming Clementine, in September 2012, and the fourth, American Blonde, in 2014.
With her mother, author Penelope Niven, Jennifer has conducted numerous seminars in writing and addressed audiences around the world. She lives in Los Angeles. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
At the heart—a big one—of All the Bright Places lies a charming love story about this unlikely and endearing pair of broken teenagers…it seems inevitable that All the Bright Places will be compared to Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, and deservedly so, at least in the case of its central characters. Violet and Finch are the archetypal offering in contemporary young adult fiction: a pair of damaged, heart-tugging teenagers who are at once outcasts and isolated, trapped by the dissonant alchemy of their combined fates.
Andrew Smith - New York Times Book Review
This heartbreaking love story about two funny, fragile, and wildly damaged high school kids named Violet and Finch is worth reading. Niven is a skillful storyteller who never patronizes her characters—or her audience.
Entertainment Weekly
(Starred review.) Niven creates a romance so fresh and funny... [and] she also makes something she foreshadows from the first line surprising. The journey...is romantic and heartbreaking, as characters and readers confront darkness, joy, and the possibilities—and limits—of love in the face of mental illness (Ages 14–up).
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) The writing in this heartrending novel is fluid, despite the difficult topics, as Niven relays the complex thought processes of the two teens. Finch and Violet, with their emotional turmoil and insecurities, will ring true to teens (Gr 10 Up). —Heather Miller Cover, Homewood Public Library, AL
School Library Journal
(Starred review.) Two struggling teens develop an unlikely relationship in a moving exploration of grief, suicide and young love.... [A] cast of carefully drawn side characters brings to life both the pain of loss and the possibility of moving forward, though some notes of hope are more believable than others. Many teen novels touch on similar themes, but few do it so memorably (14 & up).
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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