History Is All You Left Me
By Sandie Angulo Chen,
Common Sense Media Reviewer
Common Sense Media Reviewers
Heartbreaking, beautifully written tale of grief and love.
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What's the Story?
HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME is the story of Griffin Jennings, who has lost his best friend and love of his life, Theo. But even before Theo drowned in the Pacific Ocean, Griff had already lost him -- first when the precocious Theo graduated early from their New York City high school and went off to college in California, and later when he started to date a surfer boy who could've been Griffin's West Coast doppelgänger. But at the funeral, Theo's boyfriend Jackson wants to meet and share his grief with the only other boy who loved and was loved by Theo. Alternating between flashbacks to Griffin and Theo's friends-to-more love story and the present where Jackson and Griffin get to know each other and share secrets of the Theo only each of them knew, Adam Silvera's tale explores love, loss, and grief.
Is It Any Good?
Moving and memorable, Adam Silvera's second novel is an exploration of loss and love, memory and mourning. Griffin is a thoughtful, fabulously flawed protagonist, one who never stopped loving Theo, his best friend and first love. And Griffin doesn't know how he's supposed to grieve Theo when Jackson is in the picture. Jackson may have been dating Theo, but in Griffin's heart of hearts, he believes -- knows -- that he and Theo, not Theo and Jackson, were "endgame." Once Griffin and Jackson begin commiserating -- and jointly shutting others out of their shared pain -- it's clear that things are a bit too intense, that they both have secrets about Theo the other won't want to hear. Yet as a reader, you just want these boys to heal, no matter how destroyed they might feel.
Silvera does a beautiful job exploring the depths of Griffin's burdens, sadness, and insecurities. You feel the pain alongside Wade as Griffin unfairly keeps him out of the circle of trust, even though Wade lost a best friend, too, and even though Wade is steadfastly "Team Griffin." It's a complicated thing to stay best friends after being much more, and the story requires readers to have an emotional maturity about relationships or to at least recognize what's healthy and what's unhealthy in a romantic vs. platonic relationship. Silvera packs a lot of substantive issues into this tale -- sexuality, mental illness, grief, friendship, parent-child closeness, disability -- and it's all dealt with in a nuanced, thought-provoking way that will stay with readers.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about the way love, sex and sexuality are explored in History Is All You Left Me. Talk about the significant role of sex in the story and in YA literature. Is reading about sex different from watching depictions of it on TV and in movies?
Discuss the role of grief in teen books. Why do you think there are so many books that deal with protagonists grieving the loss of loved ones? Why are they helpful?
Are the friendships in History Is All You Left Me believable? Which of the friendships are the most authentic?
Book Details
- Author: Adam Silvera
- Genre: Contemporary Fiction
- Topics: Friendship, High School
- Book type: Fiction
- Publisher: Soho Teen
- Publication date: January 17, 2017
- Publisher's recommended age(s): 14 - 18
- Number of pages: 294
- Available on: Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, iBooks, Kindle
- Last updated: July 13, 2017
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