“I'm sorry, but please don't be mad at me for reliving all of it. History is all you left me.”

Oh, where to start with this one. I have a lot of feelings about this book, and I guess I’ll just go ahead and get this out of the way: despite the fact that I still gave it a decent rating, I’m tremendously disappointed, because I thought for sure that this would be a 5-star read for me. I adored Adam’s most recent release, They Both Die at the End, to the degree that I put him on my auto-buy list immediately. I’d heard such good things about History that I went into it fully convinced it would be just as good, but that wasn’t entirely the case.

“I was in love and love died and the pain you've left isn't pain I can see myself having the strength to face again.”

First of all, Adam’s writing is not to blame here. I think he’s a magnificent storyteller; his voice is powerful and relentless, his books are filled to the brim with lovable quotes and moments that you just have to stop and soak in for a moment, and his plots are devastating, haunting, and downright beautiful. The story was not the problem. Griffin was.

“History remains with the people who will appreciate it most.”

Griffin, in theory, should’ve been a great character; he’s grieving and heartsick (we stan an angsty protagonist in this house), he’s a Potter fanatic, he’s a little cinnamon roll, and he offers a portrayal of OCD that, while at times incredibly repetitive, is brutally honest and takes the representation to a degree of accuracy (for some people with OCD—not all, obviously) that most authors aren’t willing to tackle.

“I'll never understand how time can make a moment feel as close as yesterday and as far as years.”

Unfortunately, all of the benefits to his character are overshadowed by how tremendously small his worldview is. Despite the fact that so many other people in his life are grieving alongside him, or perhaps even have reason to grieve more than Griffin does, he can’t possibly fathom the idea of anyone being half as broken as he is, and so he causes constant pain to the people around him. Perhaps this was intentional on Adam’s part, as a way to offer a particularly flawed protagonist, but it was just hard to stomach at times.

“History is nothing. It can be recycled or thrown away completely. It isn’t this sacred treasure chest I mistook it to be. We were something, but history isn’t enough to keep something alive forever.”

Throughout the story, as we alternate timelines between the past and present, it’s evident that we’re slowly building up to a devastating confession of Griffin’s, but by the time it hits, he’d become so unlikable for me that it didn’t even affect me emotionally. I felt like I had missed something huge.

I heard so many people say that this story crushed them entirely, that when I closed the cover with a dry eye—me, someone who cries over those Budweiser commercials with the dogs and the horses?—I knew something hadn’t clicked right. Thus, here we are, with a depressing rating that’s far lower than I thought I would ever give an Adam Silvera book, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be over here, moping.