History Is All You Left Me

Wunderschön und unglaublich schmerzhaft

Ich hab von der ersten bis zur letzten Seite geweint. Ein wunderschönes Buch, das mich sehr berührt hat. Griffin ist so viel erwachsener als seine Jahre und gleichzeitig so ein Kind. Wie er mit seinem Schmerz umgeht ist super authentisch und nachvollziehbar. History is all you left me ist super emotional und bewegend.

I even cried while reading the acknowledgments. So much crying, so much pain. It is so difficult for me to write a review of this book, just because nothing I will say or write will do this book (and my love for it) justice. I loved this book even more than Adam’s first book “More Happy Than Not”, which I didn’t even think possible. This book made me laugh and cry. It made me love the world, and hate it at the same time. This book made me think about life and death in so many ways that I can't even describe it to you. Never have I felt so conflicted when finishing a book; not because I didn’t agree with how the book ended, but because it made me reflect on myself and my life so much. The best books are the ones that stick with you after you’ve finished them, and I can safely say that this is a book like this, destined to stick with me forever. This book deals with serious topics such as grief and mental illness in such a pure, raw and genuine way. It doesn’t sugarcoat anything, it shows the reader what it’s really like to have OCD, or to lose someone very close to you, and try to deal with the consequences. I haven't read a lot of books where the main character has OCD, but I thought that the representation was really on point. But the book isn’t only about loss, it’s also about facing your mistakes, and how scary that can be. It’s also about love, and how love can change who you are as a person in so many ways. I cannot describe how this book made me feel. It’s a mix between happy, sad and grateful. However, as always when reading an Adam Silvera book, I am so happy to have read it. (Although it made me really sad and cry for like 8 times. Thanks Adam. I loved it, though. Also it was full of nerdy references about Star Wars and Harry Potter, all of which made me freak out. I love it when I can put my HP trivia to use, even when reading a book! Okay, bye.) My favorite quotes from the book: “I feel like a rock being skipped through the ocean – pain, relief, pain again, relief again, eventually destined to sink.” “I'll never understand how time can make a moment feel as close as yesterday and as far as years.” “I was in love and love died and the pain you've left isn't pain I can see myself having the strength to face again.” “Then there’s the kind of zombie I’ve become now: the one who has lost everything—his brain, his heart, his light, his direction. He wanders the world, bumping into this, tripping over that, but keeps going and going. That is life after death.”

Inhalt: Griffins Leben ändert sich schlagartig, nachdem er erfahren muss, dass seine erste Liebe und Ex-Freund Theo bei einem schrecklichen Unfall ertrunken ist. Obwohl Theo vor einiger Zeit für sein Studium von New York nach Kalifornien gezogen ist, hat Griffin immer gedacht, dass Theo eines Tages zu ihm zurückkehren wird. Durch dessen Tod hat sich dieser Traum nun mit einem Mal in Luft aufgelöst. Der einzige Mensch, der seinen Schmerz und seine Trauer nach Theos plötzlichem Tod nachvollziehen kann, ist ausgerechnet dessen neuer Freund Jackson. Durch innige Gespräche, in denen Griffin und Jackson ihre jeweiligen Erinnerungen austauschen, die sie mit Theo geteilt haben, versuchen die beiden den Trauerprozess gemeinsam zu bewältigen. Dabei erfährt Griffin nicht nur Geschichten, die ihm durch die Distanz verborgen geblieben sind, sondern muss sich auch seinen ganz eigenen Geheimnissen stellen. Meine Meinung: Das Buch ist sehr gefühlvoll und berührend geschrieben und die Seiten sind während dem Lesen nur so dahingeflogen. Die Kapitel wechseln sich immer zwischen der Gegenwart - also nach Theos Tod - und der Vergangenheit ab, so dass man als Leser erst nach und nach mehr über die Beziehung von Griffin und Theo erfährt. Man kann dadurch ihren ersten Kuss, ihr erstes Mal und viele weitere schöne Momente noch einmal miterleben und ist gleichzeitig gespannt, was für neue Aspekte man noch erfahren wird. Die Gegenwart beschäftigt vor allem mit der neu entstandenen Freundschaft zwischen Jackson und Griffin. Beides führt dazu, dass man am Ende der Geschichte Dinge über die Hauptcharaktere erfährt, die man so anfänglich niemals erwartet hätte. Ich mochte den Aufbau des Buches sehr und fand es schön, dass die Geschichte ein rundes Ende gefunden hat, indem Verstrickungen aufgedeckt wurden, von denen man erst am Ende etwas erfährt. Der einzige grössere Kritikpunkt, der mich gestört hat, war die Sache mit Griffins Zwangsstörung. Man merkt zwar, dass sich der Autor mit der Thematik befasst und ordentlich recherchiert hat, indem er verschiedene Szenen sehr realitätsnah schildert, in denen die Zwänge zum Ausdruck kommen, aber für mich hätte es diesen Aspekt für die eigentliche Story nicht auch noch gebraucht. Ich bin mir sicher, dass die Geschichte auch ohne diese psychische Erkrankung funktioniert hätte, denn neben der Zwangsstörung wurden schon so viele andere schwierige, aber auch wichtige Themen angesprochen, dass das mit den Zwängen in meinen Augen letztendlich etwas too much war. Griffin wäre auch ohne OCD ein sehr interessanter Charakter geworden. Fazit: Ein sehr gefühlsvolles Buch über eine gleichgeschlechtliche Liebe, die ein jähes Ende gefunden hat und sich einerseits mit schwierigen Themen wie den Umgang mit Trauer oder einer psychischen Erkrankung beschäftigt, aber andererseits auch die schönen Seiten einer ersten, jungen Liebe aufzeigt. Ich kann das Buch sehr weiterempfehlen!

My Heart? Broken. That’s all :)

Endlich habe ich das Buch beendet. History is all you left me hätte mir echt gut gefallen können. Da bin ich ehrlich, aber leider kann ich dem Buch keine gute Bewertung geben. Meine größten Probleme waren: - Der Hauptcharakter Griffin, dessen Lebensentscheidungen ich nicht nachvollziehen konnte und mir dachte, dass er zwar trauern darf, aber aufhören sollte zu jammern. Auf jeder Seite etwa hat er sich selbst Vorwürfe gemacht, warum er nicht mehr für Theo da war, obwohl sie zu dem Zeitpunkt gar nicht mehr zusammen waren. Er ist so selbstfokussiert, dass es ihm egal ist, wie es anderen geht. Hauptsache er darf trauern, aber alle anderen müssen ihm beistehen und haben kein Recht darauf. Das hat mich wirklich wütend gemacht, dass er regelrecht anderen wehtut, nur um mit seinem inneren (psychischen) Schmerz klarzukommen. - Der Schreibstil: Ich habe Adams erstes Buch "More Happy than not" absolut geliebt. Dort war sein Schreibstil ähnlich. Doch hier bin ich regelrecht beim Hören eingeschlafen. Der Sprecher war an sich gut, aber er schaffte es leider gar nicht irgendwelche Emotionen rüberzubringen. Ich hatte immer das Gefühl, dass die Figuren teilweise wie emotionslose Steine wirkten. - Der Plot: grunlegend ist der Plot recht schnell erzählt, aber Adam hat so viele Nebenplots und -geschichten mit in das Buch geschrieben, sodass ich mir abschnittsweise dachte, ob er das Buch unnötig aufgebläht hat. Es wirkte einfach so unzusammenhängend und sinnfrei, was für Szenen beschrieben wurden - vor allem das was in der Today-Perspektive erzählt wurde. Also kurzgesagt hat mir das Buch überhaupt nicht gefallen. Ich kann es auch nicht wirklich weiterempfehlen. Lest lieber More happy than not. Da bekommt ihr mehr für eure Lesezeit. Das war leider ein absoluter Reinfall für mich...

DNF nah bro this is just annoying me at this point

read my complete review: http://isabellsbooks.blogspot.com/ Instagram: @isleepnaked MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK I wanted to read a book from Adam Silvera for a long time because I've been following him on Instagram for a while now and just love him - he's a huge Potterhead like me and is always so lovely and enthusiastic and it's really heartwarming to see how much he and Becky Albertalli support each other. I also loved seeing his book in the Love,Simon movie - which was another tribute to the great friendship these two share. (click here to get to my last Becky Albertalli review of Leah On The Offbeat) So I bought his two latest novels: History Is All You Left Me and They Both Die At The End and was very excited to read them. I'm also very much in love with the UK Cover of History Is All You Left Me that I have and hoped that this book would be as beautiful on the inside as it is on the outside. Unfortunately, I must say that I was rather disappointed in the book. :( It has barely 300 pages, wherefore I expected to finish it very quickly - but sadly I had to really force myself through it because it was very dragging to read and made me feel tired and exhausted while reading it - to the point that I often took a nap after I read a few chapters in it. This book really dragged me down because it was very depressing to read. In that aspect it reminded me a lot on The Perks Of Being A Wallflower (click here for my review) because I felt the same way with that book. The subject of the book is sad and therefore it's definitely not a happy reading experience. And I'm not generally against books that make you sad - I rather like it when a book makes me emotional. But I don't like to be dragged down by a book right from the start until the end. That just makes for an unhappy reading experience that I can't enjoy at all because there's this inner resistance of me not even wanting to continue reading the book because I don't want to fill my time with this depressing sadness. I also think that it would have been a better read if I had at least been able to relate to the main character, Griffin, more. I just didn't like him. And when you don't like the main character but are forced to spend the whole book in his head, it's a really unnerving experience. The book is structured in alternating HISTORY and TODAY chapters - whereas the TODAY chapters deal with Griffin after his ex-boyfriend Theo's death and the HISTORY chapters tell the story of how Griffin and Theo fell in love and everything that happened until Theo died. And since Griffin praised Theo to the skies in the TODAY chapters I expected that the TODAY chapters would be the sad ones but that this sadness would get balanced out by the happiness of the HISTORY chapters. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case at all. Griffin actually seemed no different in the HISTORY chapters than he was in the TODAY chapters - not much happier, not any more relatable or likeable. And that really annoyed me and I would have really preferred it if there had been another voice in this book and not only Griffin and his bad mood. I often talk about the importance of the length of chapters for my reading speed in my reviews. Well, this book had rather short chapters and that still didn't speed up my reading because I just didn't enjoy reading it. So if you're not in the book, the chapter length can be extremely short and the book will still take you ages to finish. It's also definitely a book that would have put me in a reading slump if I hadn't read it in summer. (because I read 10 times faster in summer) Since Adam Silvera is such an outspoken Potterhead on his Instagram, I expected a lot of references in his books and was quite excited for those. There were both Harry Potter and Star Wars references in HISTORY IS ALL YOU LEFT ME but because I couldn't connect to the main character and therefore also not really to the whole story, they didn't really get me excited at all. And when I reach the point that not even Harry Potter and Star Wars references get me in a book, the book really failed for me. I liked most of the characters that weren't Griffin - which is again why I think I would have definitely enjoyed the book A LOT more if there had been different perspectives in it. I always felt so stuck in Griffin's head and felt very uncomfortable there. I found Jackson and Wade to be way more interesting characters than Griffin and also liked there dynamics with Griffin a lot more than the dynamic between Griffin and Theo. But the book put most of its emphasis on the bond between Griffin and Theo, which never got to me. I couldn't feel any chemistry between them but there was definitely some chemistry between Griffin and Jackson and I'm not too happy with the way that that chemistry got explored. There's a lot of wasted potential in my opinion in that book. I also really felt like the author actually wanted to reach a different ending than he eventually did. There comes a point in the book where some sort of twist gets revealed and that really felt like a sudden change of thought that the author had and couldn't really incorporate into the book quite smoothly. Often books have great starts and great endings but drag a lot in the middle. It was the complete opposite for this book. Somewhere in the middle the book actually got a lot better and I thought that I might end up giving it a lot more stars than I initially intended to - but then it got worse again in the end and left me feeling as disappointed as I felt most of the time that I spent with the book. Since the book is divided in this mix of TODAY and HISTORY chapters, the chronology is messed up, but still Griffin started to open up a lot more in the second half of the book and when a character opens up, he immediately gets more interesting and layered and therefore also more relatable. I also really liked that Theo, who only got praise in the first half of the book, got admitted to have had flaws as well. That also made him a lot more realistic and drew me closer to the story. I just always feel distanced to characters that aren't admitted to have any flaws - that are described to be so perfect and even though it's obviously hard to talk bad about someone who has just died, I felt that it was so important to give this character a bit more depth. After my rating I will talk a bit about the plot twist of the book in red and cursive font and my thoughts on that. If you haven't yet read the book and still want to, just stop reading after my rating. :) CONCLUSION Sadly, I was really disappointed in this book. I was super excited to read it because I love Adam Silvera's Instagram and just thought that I had these two jewels of books in my shelf that I couldn't wait to read.. and then I had no fun in reading it at all. The book really dragged me down a lot and gave me a very unhappy and exhausting reading experience that made me want to finish the book as quickly as possible so that I could move on to a better book but also was very hard to read because I really didn't like the main character. I have now very lowered expectations for the other Adam Silvera book that I own - They Both Die At The End - and have no interest in reading it any time soon. I just want to have a good time while reading a book and although I have nothing against books that make me emotional, I don't like books that only make me feel depressed throughout the whole book. RATING I award this book with 2,5 out of 5 stars. SPOILER WARNING There's a plot twist in the book that I already hinted at in my review but want to just quickly talk about a bit more here. Rather towards the end of the book, there's this sudden revelation of what's been secretly going on between Griffin and Wade. And that was quite interesting to learn about but also confused me a lot because Griffin had acted absolutely cold and awful towards Wade - basically throughout the whole book. And he was always only completely obsessed with Theo. And then Jackson appeared and I really started to ship them because they had this understandable unique connection with each other because of their shared pain and they also had chemistry. And so to suddenly bring Wade into the picture and make him and Griffin have had this weird friendship plus thing was really strange to me. It was thrown into the story and didn't feel right at all. Jackson and Griffin had this development and although it was obviously weird that these two would come together, it definitely felt like the author was clearly building up to that. There was so much time invested in building a bond between the two - and then to just suddenly make Griffin not have any feelings for Jackson but have this history with Wade, felt very much like a spontaneous decision of the author who wanted to change things in the very last minute. I mean, since the book felt so dragging to me, it was a nice change to suddenly have this plot twist that I hadn't seen coming - but I also didn't really like it. I liked Wade and the way that he treated Griffin but I just felt more resentment towards Griffin then because how badly he had treated Wade after now knowing what had happened between them. Griffin had grown a tiny bit on me through his unlikely bonding with Jackson - because that had forced him to overthink his hatred towards Jackson. But when I then saw how he treated Wade, I just lost any respect for him completely. Griffin is somebody that I really would not want to have as a friend. And he also felt like the complete opposite to what Adam Silvera comes across to be like on Instagram.

i liked it a lot overall, just unsure about the rating because while i enjoyed some parts (like the family stuff and wade!!) others didn't quite get to me as much. this book was also a bit exhausting, shifting from happy and cute moments to painful sadness which made me think i'd need a break from it but then i continued reading because it was so well written and captivating!

Ok. So. Actually, this book was great. At least the first few chapters. It was written so well, so captive and the chapters switching between history and today was a genius move. The history made me emotional, a lot. The build up of his death, their connection everything. What ruined it for me, was the new boyfriend. It just ruined it all for me. The history felt so intimate, something between just two lovers, but suddenly it's three people argh I don't know!!! I hated it!!! So much, that I just HAD to drop this Maybe I will give it another go someday but I don't think so

i want to go to sleep and never wake up. literally bawling my eyes out right now. Ten minutes later and here I am trying to form my thoughts into words. So I went into this book completely blind, I didn’t even read the synopsis on the back and I am really glad that I did it this way. This book is a 10/10 in all possible aspects : characters, plot, writing and so on. I only gave this four stars because I thought the middle was a bit boring but otherwise this book is a masterpiece. The jumps between ,,Today“ and ,,History“ were all very smooth and I didn’t get confused between past and presence like I did with other books. What I do have to say is that the romance between and Griffin and … ( can’t say because it’s a spoiler) at the end, did feel a bit forced, and that certain person didn’t feel like the right person for him , he was just there and the only other character he could have been dating. In my opinion Griffin, should not have thrown himself into another relationship that fast and instead should have been trying to cope with his grief. But I guess starting a relationship so fast is in some way realistic and can be a coping mechanism in its own way. But THE EMOTIONS this book brought out of me, heavens I don’t think I cried this much over a book, ever! I forgot to remove my mascara and I looked like I was smacked in the face, big time. I loved Griffin and Theo’s Puzzle Thing, which was especially interesting for me because a friend of mine kindly gifted me this book and made a little puzzle out of the book for me, which was such a nice and creative idea. I’m really thankful that I didn’t decide to tab this book like I wanted to in the first place because I would have used up ALL my sticky notes because there were at least 3 heartbreaking quotes on each page. Griffin is a character that I think many people can relate to on a mental and emotional level because of his OCD, and the way it was written didn’t feel forced at all. I loved every single character in this (except Veronika) and Griffin in that one scene with Jackson were he trash talked the love of his life all out of sudden, because that just felt very out of character for me and it just seemed like an excuse to make Jackson and Griffin make out. And I also want to add a HUGE trigger warning for grief!!!! And now I will go back to crying over these last few chapters, bye “People are complicated puzzles, always trying to piece together a complete picture, but sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we’re left unfinished. Sometimes that’s for the best. Some pieces can’t be forced into a puzzle, or at least they shouldn’t be, because they won’t make sense.” “History is nothing. It can be recycled or thrown away completely. It isn’t this sacred treasure chest I mistook it to be. We were something, but history isn’t enough to keep something alive forever.” “I was in love and love died and the pain you've left isn't pain I can see myself having the strength to face again.” “I’ll never understand how time can make a moment feel as close as yesterday and as far as years.” “This is the moment of the end. This is where we give up hope on reversing time, where we abandon finding a cure to death, where we live in this Theo-less universe, where we say goodbye. But I can’t. It is goodbye for most, but not for me. Never me.” <3 One day later and I’m still thinking about this. I have been talking with a friend of mine who has also read this book that she, same as me, also had a weird feeling in her stomach for a long time after reading this book, because it really shows so well how grief can effect a persons life and you automatically felt like you were grieving as well. Just wanted to get this off my chest.