Review: Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Hmmm. I'm hopelessly trying to figure out how I feel about this book and what I should rate it. There were things I liked, but things that just fell flat. I did want to love love LOVE this novel though. After reading the synopsis, seeing the cover, and reading the first chapter I was pretty much sold on loving this like there was no tomorrow.

But now that I'm done, I'm not really sure how I feel.

The Good:

The writing was top notch here. The dialogue flowed nicely and I never got bored reading this novel, even when the characters did stupid things.

I also liked the story with Sky. Not the romance one, but the other one which I can't talk about because it's a spoiler. I thought the plot for this was done nicely and liked how everything came together at the end. And boy did it ever come together. Was it melodramatic and a bit over the top? Yea, it was. But I loved it.

I know this may not seem like a lot, but trust me it’s more than enough for me to enjoy this novel.

The Okay:

I liked Six, from what we saw of her (which isn't much) I thought she was pretty awesome. There were times when I felt like her dialogue and character meshed with Breckin, the Mormon gay bestest friend of Sky who is a Mormon and isn't afraid of saying Mormon a lot, because Mormons like to do that. Mormon.

This did bother me a bit, because I still don’t understand why Six had to leave and be away for the majority of the novel, only to have a replacement come in who isn't as awesome as her. Brekin is pretty much a carbon copy of Six, but Mormon. Plus, the moment Holder comes into the picture, we hardly see Brekin too. So I mean, how Six can you get with that?

Speaking of which, I did like a lot of the side characters, along with Six, and wish we got to see more of them. Sadly, they too also got the shaft.

The Bad:

I've mentioned this before, but I've never been in a relationship. This may be the reason why I'm always so skeptical on the romance portions of novels, because they never do anything to me.

Couples hook up, get angry, don't talk, make up, and the novel ends and I'm left wondering, "Why didn't you just get over yourself and talk to each other when you wanted to? Maybe if you did that, you wouldn't have wasted so much time feeling sorry for yourself." I just don't understand. Maybe when I get into a relationship, I'll be able to understand where these characters are coming from, but till then, it's just not doing anything for me.

Knowing that, it didn't surprise me that the romance here didn't work. Not because of the misunderstandings between Sky and Holder, but because Holder just seems.....what's a good word to describe him. Sky used intense, so I'll go with that.

The first time they meet, Holder glares at her, chases her down, blocks her from going into her car, and then punches his car. You find out why later, but if I was in Sky's position I'd say to myself, "Pdbkwm, do you really want to lust after a guy as unhinged as Holder? Sure he may look good, but he also gets angry and punches things for no reason." I'd then reply with, "You know what, I agree. Let's just ignore the intense fellow and be on our merry way Tralalalalala."

And that would be it. Instead, Sky let's him in and we see more of his...intense behaviour. Does he get better? Sure in the boyfriend department. As the story progresses, the only bad thing about him his inability to stop saying, "Baby" this and "Babe" that. But my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth impression of him weren't good enough for me to like or root for this relationship.

I mean, if we're meant to like him, no, live or love him by the end of the novel, why did he need to be so...intense for a good portion of it?

Readers, is this type of behaviour hot? Please help me understand, so I can understand this relationship.

I know I talked about Holder a lot, but can I also mention that this relationship between him and Sky seemed purely physical. Where is the love? It's gone. It's been replaced with lust, lust, and more lust. So when they were going through Sky's better plot in the story, I didn't really understand why he needed to be there so much. Plus, their love was just a mask of their unhealthy co-dependency towards each other.

I'm sounding really heartless here, so I'll stop here. But yea, the romance portion of the novel, which was a good portion of it, didn't do anything for me.

Overall:

I loved one of the plots, hated the romance, and couldn’t stand Holder. I guess that makes this a solid 3ish…I guess. I’ll probably pick up another book by Colleen Hoover in the future though. The writing was really good, so I do want to see more from her.


3ish stars out of 5