Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Atria Books
Date Published: 3rd October 2017
Pages: 385
Source: Bought
Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness.
The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.
Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.
Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.
I am a fairly big fan of Colleen Hoover, so I know what to expect with her books... and it's usually something that will stab me in the heart and make me cry for hours. I love going into her books blind, which is exactly what I did with this book. I knew absolutely nothing about the premise when I went in and I'm glad that I didn't. I enjoyed this book to an extent, but it wasn't my favourite book that Colleen has written.
So I read this a while ago, I should have written the review after I read it, or at least made some notes... I'll try to remember my thoughts from memory.
First and foremost, I loved the family dynamic of this book, it was... odd to say the least but it definitely kept me reading. It's not often that a book focuses on family rather than a love interest, so I enjoyed that. But the romance aspect in this book got on my nerves. I'll admit, when I read the first few pages, I had to stop. It made me question whether or not I wanted to continue with the book, it was basically insta-love and I have absolutely no time for that. I'm so glad I continued to read on, because it is far from the insta-love that I was expecting. The aspect of the romance that I didn't like was that it was there. I didn't want there to be any romance in this book. After I finished it, I just thought... damn, this would have been just as strong without the romance. It's a shame that there's romance in absolutely everything, because sometimes it's just really not necessary at all.
The family dynamic was my favourite thing about this book. It was dysfunctional, to say the bloody least. The dysfunctional family is one of my favourite things to read about, I have absolutely no idea why. I just find it fascinating and this one did not disappoint. I thought for a minute, that it was a little far-fetched, that it was just so unrealistic - who has a family like that?! - but then I realised, there are some people who do have super dysfunctional families. This happens in real life. Maybe it's not common, but it's definitely not unheard of.
As for the storyline, it was eh. It wasn't exciting, it wasn't even that unique but it held my attention and I really quite liked the characters so I can't fault it too much.
Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but it really wasn't that memorable. I rated this 4* on Goodreads!
What were your thoughts? :)
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