Hopeless by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
4.5 stars!
So… The summary to this story was kind of vague, but it’s Colleen Hoover. Who cares, you all knew I was going to read it immediately even though I didn’t really know what I was getting into, and Colleen doesn’t disappoint. I thought at about half way through the book I knew exactly what was happening and I fist pumped that I had figured it all out.
I was wrong.
Well, let me amend that, I was only half right.
We first meet Sky as she and her best friend Six are letting boys sneak into their rooms. While Six has earned her reputation, Sky only lets everyone think that she’s a promiscuous girl. She isn’t, she only uses it as an escape, but it never gets further than making out.
Sky was adopted when she was five and has been home-schooled, her mother, Karen, doesn’t allow any kind of technology in their home. No TV, phones, internet etc etc. But Six is leaving the country for school and Sky is going to start her first year at the local high school. Of course her reputation proceeds her and so she never really connects with anyone at the school other than her new best friend Breckin.
“I’ve never been swept off my feet. I don’t get butterflies. In fact the whole idea of being swooned by anyone is foreign to me… Somehow, in the course of sixty seconds, this guy has managed to swoon me, then terrify the hell out of me.”
Enter Dean Holder… or Holder as he’s called. He’s spent the last year in Austin with his father but he’s back and from the very first interaction between him and Sky I was hooked.
“As soon as I lay eyes on him, I immediately notice three things: 1) His amazingly perfect white teeth hidden behind that seductively crooked grin. 2) The dimples that form in the crevices between the corners of his lips and cheeks when he smiles. 3) I’m pretty sure I’m having a hot flash. Or I have butterflies. Or maybe I’m coming down with a stomach virus.”
I’m being intentionally vague in this review just so you know. I am trying to keep this spoiler free and a lot of the details that you learn throughout the story weave together to create this epic reveal later on, which is why I can’t really tell you much about the story. Which I suppose is also why the summary is kind of vague.
What I can tell you is this. I loved the relationship that forms between Holder and Sky. The story starts with a prologue that will have you wondering what the hell is going on and then jumps back in time a bit. But within all that, there are also flashbacks to another time many years prior that shed some light on Sky and Holder’s history. Hoover really did an amazing job with this. And the love story between these two is wonderfully sweet. Holder and Sky are both amazingly written and I shouldn’t and couldn’t be surprised about that simply based on the characters that Hoover created in her Slammed series. Watching their relationship evolve and the chemistry was perfect.
“Let me inform you of something,” he says in a low voice. “The moment my lips touch yours, it will be your first kiss. Because if you’ve never felt anything when someone’s kissed you, then no one’s ever really kissed you. Not the way I plan on kissing you.”
And holy crap their ‘first kiss’ that isn’t a kiss… let’s just say Colleen can write some citrus!
See… he’s sweet and sexy and definitely incredibly swoony, but it’s more than that. He’s protective of her and while he has this bad guy image he’s really not your typical bad boy. I absolutely loved the light moments between these two best. The teasing and sweet ‘getting to know you’ phase of the relationship and his texts to her had me smiling … not because they are cheesy or anything but, well… you’ll just have to read.
Of course everything isn’t so simple and eventually everything comes to a head… and this is where I stop telling you things about the story.
This story is about hope, love, forgiveness and eventually healing. It’s about being a victim… but most importantly it’s about surviving.
“Sometimes you have to choose between a bunch of wrong choices and no right ones. You just have to choose which wrong choice feels the least wrong.”
I think that the only reason I’m marking it down a star is because I really felt that the characters were older than the 17 years they were portrayed as. I get why that had to be, why they still needed to be in high school, but at the same time, they came off as much more mature than I imagine most 17 year old’s to be. Especially Holder. BUT that’s a minor complaint for sure.
Hoover does an incredible job of pulling you into the story.. it deals with some very sensitive issues in a way that is tastefully written but still manages to impart the seriousness of the subject and I have to applaud her for that.
Definitely give this book a read, I promise you’ll be pulled into Sky and Holder’s world and won’t come up for air until you turn that last page… in fact I was up WAY too late last night finishing this because I had to know what was going to happen.
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