Review: Losing Hope by Colleen Hoover

#1 Sunday Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us held readers spellbound with her novel Hopeless, the story of what happened when a troubled girl named Sky encountered a long-lost childhood friend, Dean. Now, in Losing Hope, we finally learn the truth about Dean Holder.

Haunted by the little girl he couldn’t save from imminent danger, Holder’s life has been overshadowed by feelings of guilt and remorse. He has never stopped searching for her, believing that finding her would bring him the peace he needs to move on. However, Holder could not have anticipated that he would be faced with even greater pain the moment they reconnected.

In Losing Hope, Holder reveals the way in which the events of Sky’s youth affected him and his family, leading him to seek his own redemption in the act of saving her. But it is only in loving Sky that he can finally begin to heal himself.

Review: The Losing Hope/Hopeless series is the first Colleen Hoover I have read and I have been meaning to read it for ages. I’m not going to lie-it took me a little while to get into the previous book, Hopeless, because I thought it was just another YA romance with a little too much silliness and not enough substance. Now I will say that it was a slow start to the book and I was ready to give up hope until the twist that I didn’t see coming happened. Now I might have been naive not to have seen this twist coming but I was in  the car listening to the audio and I gasped and I had to the listen to the rest of the book in one big chunk after that just to try and find out what was going to happen. 

I didn’t know, going into book 2 that it was going to be the same story but from the male point of view and when I started listening, I was so here for it. We get to go even deeper into the story and really see the other side of it and the pain that Holder (Dean) has to go through when he loses hope and when he loses others close to him too. It is here that we really get to bond with him and find out what makes him tick and we get to meet his best friend the same way we get to meet Skye's best friend in book one. I really appreciated seeing the other side of the first story and although we didn’t get to find out what happened next for these two, we did get to find out more and go deeper into their story. 

I appreciated hearing this story from Dean’s point of view and really going behind the rumours that we hear about him in book one, especially those surrounding the kind of person that he is. One thing that I had heard that this author does well, but hadn’t seen first hand until now was the way she handles consent in relationships. We get to hear Dean thinking that he wants to take things further with Skye but knowing that it isn’t the right time, or getting carried away but reassuring us that he will stop if he feels it is too much for her or if she tells him too. I think this is so important to read about in any romantic fiction but especially YA romance and especially one that deals with young people who have been through so much! I really enjoyed this book and I can’t wait to read more of the novellas and finally read more Colleen Hoover!

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Review: Paper Towns by John Green

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew...

Review: I think this may be my favourite John Green novel and I am regretting leaving this until so late to read. Sweeping statement I know but I so enjoyed this novel. I felt that the characters were so well developed, I felt a real affinity with them and I can wait to some how they come across on the big screen when I se the film. The storyline of this novel was also seriously gripping,in found myself turning and turning this pages and read it in just two sittings. There is a certain element of mystery about it in some parts but this is most definitely a coming of age novel and something that you will feel yourself as you read John Green's beautiful words! 

I like the fact that this novel was written from Q's point of view because I really could identify with Q as a character. Yes, I did find myself judging him for his kind of obsessive nature when it came to Margo and the parallel's between his search for Margo and the novel Moby Dick that he is reading in class are really quite accurate but I respected the fact that a he had always been a good student and wanted to remain that way but he was torn between staying that 'ideal student' and following his heart/his friends. I thought the characters of Ben and Radar were seriously funny and I really enjoyed reading about them as much as I did Q! Margo, on the other hand, I wasn't so taken with. I felt she was a little attention seeking almost at the same time as she was trying not to be attention seeking but I thought her character worked really well as the yang to Q's ying! 

I really liked the fact that this novel was set in Orlando becaus I could picture some of the areas they were talking about and visiting and there have been so many movies that are set in 'upstate New York' that I could picture there too so I really liked the setting of this book. And of course, being written by John Green, there is some beautiful description, no matter where the setting or what the situation the character are in. As far as young adult books go, this can be enjoyed on so many levels that I am sure, no matter what the audience, any reader will be able to get something from this young or more mature. It is definitely a coming of age novel, it is funny and there are some seriously good life observations contained with tin it's pages. I so enjoyed this reading experience and now I can't wait to see the film and see it do justice to this great novel.