The New York Times favorably compared All the Bright Places to Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor & Park and John Green's The Fault in Our Starsin that "Violet and Finch are the archetypal offering in contemporary young adult fiction: a pair of damaged, heart-tugging teenagers who are at once outcasts and isolated, trapped by the dissonant alchemy of their combined fates." Entertainment Weekly and The Guardian both gave ultimately favorable reviews for the work, with The Guardianwriting "Niven’s first foray into Young Adult fiction lacks narrative tension but has plenty of emotional heft".

The novel won the 2015 Goodreads Choice Award for Young Adult fiction