This review will be spoiler free!
Summary: When Griffin's childhood best friend and first love, Theo, dies in an accident, he feels lost. He'd thought that Theo would eventually return to him as they'd been "endgame," but now Jackson who was Theo's boyfriend at the time is in town for the funeral and everything is spiraling. His obsessive compulsions are getting worse and he can't stop living in the past while also refusing to confront it.
I really enjoyed History is All You Left Me. I found it incredibly moving and unafraid to be brutally honest. Life is often messy and everybody handles those messes very differently. Griffin feels his life has fallen apart since Theo's death and it ends up causing him to make some bad decisions. He definitely does not handle everything in the healthiest of manners so this book is about learning to face one's issues and work with them. It is okay to have flaws, but it's also good to have them handled. Acknowledge when they go too far.
I also found it very interesting how something like a death will make you look at things completely different. Theo and Griffin's past is slowly revealed to us and the audience eventually learns both the good and the bad. At the beginning it had seemed as if it'd all be good from how Griffin talked about Theo as if he was a saint. Both of them make their mistakes, but I found it interesting how easily those could be overlooked. After all, we always want and prefer to remember the good times.
One of my favorite quotes: "people reveal different parts of themselves to different people." I do act differently around certain people. However, that's because we all have different parts that make up the whole of ourselves. Some friends relate better to my book side and I'm much more that person around them than the friends who connect with me more about my love for travel. It's easier to talk about the things I have in common with that one person and so they'll see that side of me more. It's a line that made a lot of sense to me. However, I also think that it can become unhealthy in certain scenarios. You never want to end up hiding your true self out of fear.
I found this to not be a book with an obvious climax; instead, it was more about following Griffin's journey for me. I enjoyed seeing the character development and how certain events affected later events. It was really well done in this sense.
I thought it was great how being gay was not an issue the characters had to face. They were gay and that was that. It didn't change the type of person they were and didn't need to be obsessed over. It was how it should be in the real world: completely normal. It's there but it's not the most important part about the characters' identity. I feel like I shouldn't even have to give Adam Silvera a hats off for this. I wouldn't be writing about how awesomely normalized a straight relationship is in a different book. It should not have to be a big deal, but it still is.
While I am very impressed by this book, I have to admit that I don't relate to it all that much. I'm straight and don't have anything like OCD. A friend/significant other has not died and so I have not dealt with the things that Griffin has. I think this book is amazing, but my lack of connection couldn't get me to give a full rating. I just want to make it clear that 4 stars instead of 5 is not because of the quality or whatnot, it's just that personal lack of connection. This held me back from letting the story take life in my mind, which is what usually gets me to give a 5 star rating.
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