Jennifer Niven’s book “All the Bright Places” has pulled me back and forth across the spectrum of emotions; from heartache to happiness, joy to sorrow.

The heartwarming (and yet, heartbreaking) novel focused on two high school seniors and their search for life and death. One’s name is Violet Markey: Bartlett High’s semi-popular girl who can never escape the grief of her sister’s death. The other is Theodore Finch: a boy who everybody knows, but no one understands.

The two coincidentally meet on the top of their school’s bell tower, each separately contemplating suicide. Both seem to save each other from jumping. From there, the pair become unlikely partners on a class project and grow closer than either of them ever thought they would.

Being Niven’s first young adult work, “All The Bright Places” exceeded my expectations. Her novel combined instances of snarky humor with real troubles teenagers are burdened with world-wide, including mental illnesses that millions of people suffer from daily. This contrast only emphasized the story’s key principles of love, depression, and pain.
Overall, Jennifer Niven’s novel “All the Bright Places” provides a tender story about two broken teenage outcasts that find each other- and coincidentally find hope.