History is All You Left Me

(3.5) This book was so incredible, the way Griffin and Theo were characterised, as well as the realistic way that their relationships with each other, as well as Wade and Jackson changed throughout the story.
It was so delightful to see Griffin and Theo's relationship play out, between chapters of the current day, 2016, where Theo was dead. The way the book was written, with the shifting from the past, when Griffin and Theo were dating, to the present, when Theo died in California with his new boyfriend, didn't feel confusing. I was able to tell what was going on and didn't feel like the story was throwing around it's perspective too much, which was good.

I found the complicated relationships Griffin had with Theo, Jackson, and Wade very interesting.
How his relationship with Theo was the best thing that happened to him, until Theo went to university in California and they got more separated (physically and metaphorically). After Theo starts dating Jackson, he makes a promise to Griffin that he'll go back to him once Griffin gets to university, which he says behind Jackson's back. It's really interesting to see how Theo loves both Griffin and Jackson, and how the things he does, such as teaching Jackson Griffin's special kisses, slowly reveal him to be a more grey character than once perceived by Griffin.

Griffin's developing dependency on Jackson is compelling, as he ends up flying to California to see how Theo lived there, and then has sex with Jackson as revenge on Theo for teaching him Griffin's kisses, which was personal to their relationship.
What seemed like a good, helpful relationship for both Griffin and Jackson, expose its rather unhealthy aspects. I like how Griffin tries to maintain a friendship with Jackson at the end of the book, so that they can still heal together, but be able to live their own lives and not rely on each other in such an unhealthy way. I enjoy how Griffin learns to acknowledge Jackson and Theo's relationship in a good way, and allows Jackson to keep his happy memories of his relationship with Theo.

I do have a lot of praise for this book, although its downfall is probably the eventual relationship between Griffin and Wade. Once I finished this book, I just felt unsatisfied with how it ended with Griffin and Wade slowly developing a relationship, after having sort-of-casual sex while Theo was alive. I feel like for this relationship to have worked, Griffin and Wade should've been given more history and development of their friendship, because before they kissed, I saw nothing that would make them like each other. All of the development of Wade and Griffin's relationship comes after the reveal of the fact that they had sex for a while. Although I enjoy the way Wade challenges Griffin's compulsions (in opposition to how Theo believed they made Griffin special), but I feel like there just wasn't enough substance for their relationship at the end to be believable and satisfactory for me.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. Unfortunately, it just didn't hit me like More Happy Than Not and They Both Die At The End did. TBDATE filled my heart with love for Mateo and Rufus, and sadness of their deaths, and MHTN emptied it, they did what they did well, and I felt good after I had read them. History Is All You Left Me was different. It just didn't have the same spark that the others did. MHTN and TBDATE had a reason. HIAYLM didn't have as much of a purpose; a reason for ending where it did, something purposefully written in a way that makes the reader think a particular thing. For me, History Is All You Left Me lacked that quality.