45 pages • 1 hour read
Mikki Daughtry, Rachael LippincottAll This Time
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Daughtry and Lippincott
Mikki Daughtry and Rachael Lippincott have co-authored two novels together, which have been on the New York Times bestseller list. Daughtry met Lippincott when publisher Simon & Schuster hired Lippincott to adapt Daughtry’s hit screenplay Five Feet Apart into a novel. A similar process occurred for All This Time. Daughtry outlined the story and captured the characters through a screenplay, then Lippincott adapted the dialogue into prose. Daughtry also collaborates with the screenwriter Tobias Iaconis.
Literary Context: Coming-of-Age Narrative
All This Time is a contemporary young adult romance, and typical of the genre, the story involves a coming-of-age narrative. This narrative type shows a character’s unformed beginnings, their trials, overcoming those trials, making a life-changing decision, and then finally revealing them as a more developed person with an evolved perspective. Some of the young characters in this novel have already begun this journey, such as Kim, who wants to see what her life is like without Kyle and wants to build her own, new adult self at a different school. Kyle, however, anticipates that life will go on as usual for himself and his two friends. It takes a life-changing event, the car accident, to spur Kyle’s growth and coming-of-age narrative arc.
Prior to the accident, Kyle talks about his friends in a way that implies their inseparability, describing Sam as “the glue that holds our trio together” (10). The text reveals that Kyle is somewhat self-absorbed and isn’t open to change. After the accident, when Kim has broken up with him and then presumably dies, Kyle goes through the trial of processing his grief and living life without the “trio.” He overcomes the trial through his relationship with Marley. He arrives on the other side of his coma with a changed perspective: He recognizes his and Kim’s unsuitability for one another, despite his persistence in maintaining the relationship before. Kyle encourages Sam to tell Kim how he feels about her, and Kyle begins to look forward to the future, especially a future with Marley. When he finally finds her and is determined to help her cope with her own grief and pain, his selflessness shows that he has made his final transition into adulthood.
