Book Review: Hopeless by Colleen Hoover
So, today’s review is about Hopeless by Colleen Hoover. This book will bring you on a rollercoaster ride of finding love and healing trauma in so many different ways. The only thing I know for sure after this emotional experience? I will never not read books by Colleen Hoover
Book Information
In a household where her mother forbids technology, Sky just wants one thing: to be normal. So when her mother finally agrees to let her go to public school with her best friend, Six, she’s ecstatic. The only problem? Six got accepted to a semester abroad and won’t be there to guide Sky through the brutal halls of high school.
While navigating high school on her own, Sky meets Dean Holder, a boy with a bad reputation that just doesn’t seem to fit. As they come together and fall in love, Sky and Dean learn that they share more than just feelings, they share a past, too.
If the truth is something that will shatter them both, do they want to know it? Or do they want to continue living in oblivion in a world of lies?
Review | Heidi Dischler
Trigger warning for this novel: assault and lots of childhood trauma. Tread lightly.
Okay, talk about an emotional rollercoaster! So much happened in this novel that I honestly don’t know where to start, but I think I’ll start by saying that this Colleen Hoover novel was definitely ranked closer to the top than other novels (I’m looking at you, Regretting You). But it cannot match my top favorites (November 9, Ugly Love, and It Ends With Us).
What I absolutely loved about this novel is Dean Holder. I honestly don’t know how Colleen Hoover does it, but she makes me swoon for the men she writes. One of the things that I thought was interesting and am in between on is the plot. I feel like all of the actual action happened in the last eighty or so pages of the book. Like the first two hundred and fifty pages were all Dean and Sky getting to know each other. While it was nice and cutesy and romantic most of the time, once you actually get to those last eighty pages, I felt like the book was completely different. Now, Colleen Hoover had a ton of foreshadowing and alluded to what was going to happen the whole entire time, but it still felt like I was pulled into a parallel universe. Which, in a way, I guess is what the characters felt, too.
Spoilers ahead.
So, here I am trying to understand what the heck just happened. Sky’s world was turned completely upside-down when she learned that her father had molested her as a child and that Karen was her legit aunt who kidnapped her. Dear Lord. I feel like I’m part of a soap opera. The emotions were raw and real, but one thing really did piss me off a bit. The actual speed with which Sky forgave Holder blew my mind. Like holy cow, she legit had everything she had known destroyed in her mind, Holder knew about it, kept it a secret, and she found it within herself to forgive him in the span of a few chapters? No thanks. That felt like a cop-out because she needed a sidekick to face her dad.
Other than that, though, I really did enjoy this novel. Holder was kind and forgiving and always asked her if things were okay with her and if he was going too far even though he was the “bad boy” type. I loved him. He is the #1 reason I loved this book.
Overall, Colleen Hoover continues to be one of my favorite romance authors. Her writing style is pure gold and her characters give me all the butterflies. Hopeless was no exception. Go ahead and do yourself a favor and go on a Colleen Hoover overload like I’ve been doing.
Source: Personal Copy
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