All the Bright Places

Synopsis

Theodore Finch and Violet Markey are two teenagers that want to escape from their small Indiana town. Violet counts down the days until she can move away and escape the memories of her sister's death, while Theodore struggles with severe mental illness. The suffering pair find their quirky friendship transformed into a poetic and beautiful romance. The two meet by chance on their school's bell tower with suicidal intentions, and it is never clear who saves whom from falling to their death. If this isn't enough to tie the two together, Finch asks Violet to be his partner for a class project to wander Indiana and find tourist attractions throughout their state. The pair explore Indiana and beyond in the months that follow. However, as Violet's world grows, Finch's world begins to shrink.

Reception

The New York Times favorably compared All the Bright Places to Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park and John Green's The Fault in Our Stars in that "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." Entertainment Weekly and The Guardian both gave ultimately favorable reviews for the work, with The Guardian writing "Niven’s first foray into Young Adult fiction lacks narrative tension but has plenty of emotional heft".

The novel won the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult fiction.

Movie

In July 2014 it was announced that producers Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan had purchased the film rights for All the Bright Places.[2] Elle Fanning was confirmed to be starring in the film, that it would be a Demarest Media project, and that it would be directed by Miguel Arteta.[6] Production for the film is slated to begin in spring 2017.[7] It will be release sometime in 2018.