Hopeless (Hopeless, #1) : Book Review

Hopeless (Hopeless, #1) By Colleen Hoover

Reading 'Hopeless' has been the experience of a roller coaster of emotions.

Don't go by the title: neither the story of the book is hopeless nor the book is demotivating. Though it falls into a romance genre as it unfolds the boundless love of two teenagers for each other

But it's much more than a love story. It's about two persons who are emotionally scarred and have no one to trust upon except each other, discover the truth behind the dark secrets of their lives.

On the other hand, this depicts the bitter truth of what happens when a girl is physically abused as a toddler or as a young girl or when she is in her teens.

Plot of the Story:

The story revolved around two main characters: Sky and Holder.

Sky was a seventeen years old teen and an adopted child whose father abandoned her while she was a toddler at foster home. Sky's mother (Karen) considered technology more as a curse than a boon so Sky had always been deprived of TV, internet, phone and all other electronic gadgets. Sky was home-schooled until she turned 17. Like any other teen, Sky also had boyfriends but had never been intimate with any of them as physical intimacy always made her numb.

Dean Holder was an intense high tempered boy and a school dropout. He was nineteen years old teen who was going through the emotional trauma of his sister's (Lesslie) suicide. He blamed himself for his sister's suicide as he thought he couldn't understand his sister was going through the bad phase of life which led her to commit suicide.

During all this mental chaos which they both were going through, Sky and Holder were destined to meet. They first met each other at a grocery store where Holder confused Sky to someone else, however, let go of her when Sky showed him her ID card. Later, they met on running track in front of Holder's house and finally, they both ended up joining the same high school. They both were attracted to each other from their first meeting itself. Several such encounters brought them closer and they started falling for each other. But, there was something about Holder that always sparked memories of Sky's troubled past.

And there was a day when Holder saw a bracelet in Sky's wrist and when Sky didn't tell him how she got this bracelet (because she herself didn't remember from whom she got that as it was before her adoption someone gave it to her), Holder got agitated not because he was jealous or offended but that bracelet reminded him of a past incident. Sky couldn't understand Holder's reaction. And after this incident, they both didn't talk to each other until Sky's birthday.

On Sky's birthday night, Holder came to her house and confessed his feelings which brought them closer together. But on that very night, Holder during his sleep confessed his love to Sky but addressed her as Hope and this confused Sky.

Later when Sky visited Holder's home, she accidentally entered Lesslie's room and while strolling through the room, she saw Lesslie's childhood photos which brought back Sky's hidden memories. She started recalling that she knew Lesslie and Holder from her childhood and used to play with them. She also remembered the incident when Lesslie gave her the bracelet. This agitated her and she started abusing Holder as to why he didn't tell her he knows her from childhood. Holder then confessed her the truth that she was Hope and they used to be neighbors. Holder told her that she used to cry a lot because of her father and then how one evening she went with someone in the car and never returned home. Sky was shocked to hear this truth that she was Hope, a little girl who had been missing since she was five. She couldn't digest that until now she had been thinking she was adopted by Karen but actually she had been stolen.

After this incident, the truth started unraveling. The story took many unexpected twists. Sky visited her birthplace where Holder and Lesslie were her neighbors. She visited her childhood home and recalled how she was physically abused every night at the age of 3 and that continued for two years. Sky and Holder together faced the truth behind Lesslie's suicide and Sky's adoption. Facing the revelations together, Sky and Holder began to heal their emotional scars and found a way to live and love without boundaries.

‘Hopeless' is the word tattooed on Holder's arm depicting: Hope + Less. And thus became the title of the book which is apt.

Please read the book to find out how the lives of Sky, Holder, Lesslie, and Karen were entwined.
Also, 'Hopeless' is a series of  three books with 'Hopeless' being the #1.

Here's the link for Hopeless #2 i.e. 'Losing Hope':

https://bookreviewsbyricha.blogspot.com/2019/01/losing-hope-hopeless-2-book-review.html

Following extracts deeply moved me:

When Sky was thinking about Holder on her birthday night

‘I hate that there are so many sides to him that I don't understand, and I don't know if I even want to keep trying to understand them. There are parts of him I love, parts of him I hate, parts that terrify me, and parts that amaze me. But there's a part of him that does nothing but disappoint me… and that's the hardest part of him to accept.'

When Holder confessed his feelings for the first time to Sky:

"And I'm not ready to tell you I'm in love with you, because I'm not. Not yet. But whatever this is I'm feeling – it's so much more than just like. It's so much more. I've been trying to figure out why there isn't some other word to describe it. I want to tell you exactly how I feel but there isn't a single damn goddamned word in the entire dictionary that can describe this point between liking and loving you, but I need that word. I need you to hear me say it. "

To which Sky replied: ‘Live. Like + Love.'  Sky and Holder both said together: ‘We live each other'.

When Sky remembered everything about her past, she compared life with a book and how in the book we can have chapter breaks but in life, it's not possible. Here what she was thinking:

"You can't just end a chapter, then skip the things you don't want to live through, only to open it up to a chapter that better suits your mood. Life can't be divided into chapters… only minutes. The events of your life are all crammed together one minute right after the other without any time lapses or blank pages or chapter breaks because no matter what happens life just keeps going and moving forward and words keep flowing and truths keep spewing whether you like it or not and life never lets you pause and just catch your fucking breath. "

Lines which I liked the most:

(Ones highlighted in bold are my fav.)

•  Should it matter what genre it is if the book is good!
• P.S.: Only the book lover can relate to this line.
• Lust is the best of all the deadly sins.
•  Honest. That's all I'll ever be with you.
• I'm the only one who can be held accountable for the way my life turns out.
• Not everything is going to go my way and not everyone gets a happily-ever-after.
• When things get too good and too right and too perfect, it's only because the ugly twist hasn't yet infiltrated the goodness of it all.
• There's nothing like the guilt you feel when there's room in your heart to love evil.
• When two people become one: they no longer share only love. They also share all of the pain, heartache, sorrow, and grief.
•  All marriages have a time limit if you enter them for the wrong reason. Marriage doesn't get easier… it only gets harder. If you marry someone hoping it will improve things, you might as well set your timer the second you say, ‘I do.'

 Rating: 3.5/5