History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera (review)

If doling out his life in even numbers and counting to seven whenever he runs across the number thirteen are the compulsions that plague Griffin, his obsessions are all about Theo, his best friend who became his boyfriend. Now, near the end of Griffin’s junior year and Theo’s first semester in college, Theo has died, and though he and Griffin had broken up, Griffin always imagined the breakup was temporary. Grief threatens to drown him like the California ocean that took Theo, especially since Theo’s new boyfriend, Jackson, insists on an equal claim to Theo’s memory. While Griffin initially hates Jackson, the two come together to survive their loss and become intimate in an act of posthumous revenge sex against Theo. Addressing Theo as a living presence, Griffin alternates between narrating his feelings on present events and the history of their relationship from its blushingly romantic beginnings to first sex to muddled break-up to ambiguous end. Griffin’s obsessive idealization of his first love is perhaps the only significant role Griffin’s OCD plays in this attenuated story of grieving the loss of Theo, who eventually emerges as, if not the villain of the piece, at least as someone not really worthy of Griffin’s devotion. There’s a lot of wallowing since Griffin spends most of his time in his head, dissecting every last detail of his memories of Theo and their friend, Wade, who plays a surprising—almost conveniently so—role in the end. Nearly every conversation Griffin recounts is a define-the-relationship one that reflects overly romanticized adult insights and perspectives as he careens through the stages of grief. Nonetheless, there’s a pleasure in the indulgence, and readers who enjoy more feelings exploration than plot in their tragic romances could be the audience for this.