Author: Colleen Hoover
# of Pages: 386 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Romance, Chick-lit
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up — she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
Review: Why am I crying?
This was supposed to be some silly, brainless romance I could enjoy. Even the synopsis reads like some cliche love triangle. To be fair, it took me forever (aka me reading a chapter or so every couple of weeks) to get through the first 30-40%. It read exactly like I expected - woman meets man and they have immediate sexual chemistry without much depth to their relationship otherwise.
The progression of the main relationship happens in such a short span of time, it was hard for me to take it even half seriously. I was bashing Hoover in my head for creating such an unrealistic relationship that I couldn't root for. The character building in general was especially weak - a handsome neurosurgeon who seems to have it all? A main character who seems to have it made career-wise? What superficial struggles could Hoover possibly have in store for the reader?
I was all ready to give this book 2 stars. I'm a huge sucker for cheesy romance, so at some high points I was considering giving it 3 if I felt at least neutral about it by the end. Nothing could be worse than that terrible chick lit I read that wouldn't stop talking about the main character loving chicken tikka masala, but Lily using whether or not someone donated to charity as a metric on whether they're a good person (ask any billionaire if they've donated to charity; they'll probably say yes) was getting really close.
But then Hoover introduces the topic of domestic abuse. I'm surprised there isn't noted somewhere in the synopsis because as it is now, it's not doing the book justice. While the fluffy parts of this book are 2-3 star range, the way Hoover writes about domestic abuse is completely heart wrenching. I couldn't believe I was reading the same book; while all other parts of unrealistic, the depiction of domestic abuse was almost TOO real.
Even one of the cliche lines Hoover threw in early on, "We're all just people who sometimes do bad things," this line rang more true after reading through her complex depiction of both the victim and the perpetuator of domestic abuse. While some people's abuse might be more cut and dry, some can take the form where those involved have a mix of good and bad within them.
After learning from the author's note that Hoover was basing the domestic abuse off of her parents' relationship, everything made sense. The more fiction the story was, the more Hoover's writing struggled. But once it was based off of real events, Hoover was really able to pull through and send a message through her chick-lit reminiscent of Jodi Picoult.
If you don't mind slogging through the cheesy beginning, and you're into chick-lit, I would actually recommend this book to you. As far as chick-lit goes, this is definitely one of the better ones.
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