[Review] History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

History is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera

Rating: 3.5 stars

Published: January 17th 2017

Goodreads Synopsis:

When Griffin's first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college and started seeing Jackson, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right. But now, the future he's been imagining for himself has gone far off course. 
To make things worse, the only person who truly understands his heartache is Jackson. But no matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin's downward spiral continues. He's losing himself in his obsessive compulsions and destructive choices, and the secrets he's been keeping are tearing him apart. 
If Griffin is ever to rebuild his future, he must first confront his history, every last heartbreaking piece in the puzzle of his life.

History is All You Left Me is the first Silvera book I've ever read! It was a one wild ride - I didn't cry, but I really felt sad after. It is told in Griffin's alternating perspective of the past and the present as he tries to cope with his ex-boyfriend Theo's death.


The book does a great job of capturing Griffin's grief and his OCD. Silvera's prose is also poetic.

She turns ninety this December. I lost you at eighteen. She lived a life as a military mechanic, a manager at a pharmacy, a great-grandmother, a wife to a man I never met and later to a man I never liked. You lived a life as a genius, an honors student with a promising future, a first love to me, and then a boyfriend to Jackson. She lived a lot in her life, but you got cut off before we could set things right.

The world should stop lying to kids because they're always brutally honest with us.

As we slowly peel the layers behind Griffin and Theo's relationship, as well as Griffin's relationship to Wade and Jackson, we're presented with their own grief and suffering too. So we've got these multi-layered characters and this almost mystery-like storytelling that allows readers to relive the moments before and after Theo's death.

I can't exactly explain why I'm rating this book 3.5 stars because while I loved the prose and its emotional resonance, I didn't feel as strongly as other readers who clearly loved this book. Maybe this is the curse of high expectations.