Amy Cherrix, children’s buyer at Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, N.C., looks forward to steering teen readers toward History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera, due from Soho Teen in January.
In his second novel, after More Happy Than Not, Adam Silvera once again asks readers to consider the future, and their relative position to it.
Griffin is grieving over the death of his ex-boyfriend and first love, Theo, while also grappling with severe OCD. Making matters worse, he meets Theo’s bereaved boyfriend, Jackson, at the funeral. As Griffin struggles to make sense of life without Theo by reaching out to Jackson, his symptoms intensify. When the carefully controlled world he has constructed unravels in a series of violent outbursts, questionable choices, and awkward confrontations, Griffin is stripped of his best defense: the ability to lie to himself. All that’s left is history and the surprising truth that he must tell in the present. (Confession: I never saw it coming.)
Silvera’s alternating chapters take place in “history” or “today.” The result is a deft smash cut between then and now that so accurately reflects the agonizing slowness of grief that I was lost in this novel—with its complex narrative, range of emotions, and well-crafted characters—from page one. Despite the overwhelming sadness in this story, as Griffin tries to find his way out of the darkness, hope and joy suffuse every page. Here Silvera truly shines, as he depicts the unapologetic love between two boys and the superhuman ability of hurt people to survive in spite of themselves.
Read it because you loved More Happy Than Not. Read it because you crave young adult novels that are as tough as they are tender. Most of all, handsell it like crazy, because this is what fresh, diverse YA looks like. Pair with other great works of YA realism by Becky Albertalli, Matt de la Peña, John Corey Whaley, David Levithan, and Sara Zarr.
History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera. Soho Teen, $18.99 Jan. 2017 ISBN 978-1-61695-692-9
