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“People are complicated puzzles, always trying to piece together a complete picture, but sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we’re left unfinished. Sometimes that’s for the best. Some pieces can’t be forced into a puzzle, or at least they shouldn’t be, because they won’t make sense.”

This, Adam Silvera’s second novel, follows Griffin, a teen New Yorker whose first love, Theo, dies in a tragic accident. When Theo moved to California to start college early, Griffin broke up with him because he didn’t want to feel like he was holding him back. Well, that’s at least what he told himself he was doing.

Even after Theo started dating Jackson a few months after arriving at Santa Monica College, Griffin always thought that they’d eventually find their way back to each other. With Theo’s untimely death, Griffin and Jackson are both left heartbroken. They soon realize that they are the only ones who fully understand each other’s grief. No matter how much they open up to each other, Griffin’s grief takes control and he starts losing himself in his obsessive compulsions, destructive choices, and the secrets tearing him apart.

This, Adam Silvera’s second novel, is written with a nonlinear narrative, alternating between chapters devoted to the past, “History,” and to the present, “Today.” If Griffin ever wants to move forward, he must try to put together the puzzle of his life, fitting together every heartbreaking piece of his History without neglecting the complicated pieces of Today.

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“After Theo, his first boyfriend, dies in a terrible accident, Griffin forges a friendship with Theo's ex-boyfriend Jackson.”