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nuestlove12 's review for:
Without Merit
by Colleen Hoover
I have no clue how this won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance of 2017, because this installment of nonsense is so far from "romance," that I barely know what to say.
In the same vein as the letter/list of grievances Merit aired out to her family members, here is my own list of things that made me stop in disgust and/or disbelief while reading this book:
1. The twins' names are Merit and Honor, and the brother is named Utah, while the uncle is named Luck, and the mother and the father's affair partner are both named Victoria. What.
2. This whole book is drenched in such OoOoOoOhhhhh I'm so ~*~Quirkyyyy~*~ energy, you simply can't escape it.
3. Sagan kissed Merit *without knowing who she was*, because he confused her with her identical twin sister, but he wasn't ever even dating the sister, so why did he spontaneously kiss her????
4. Sagan got a whole entire tattoo dedicated to the exact location (coordinates) of where he first kissed/met Merit a mere TWO WEEKS into knowing her, and he straight up told her that the more he got to actually know her as a person, the less he liked her. Bruh.
5. The father shacked up with his affair partner and knocked her up while his first wife was severely ill, and the three of them somehow coexist in the same house.
6. The father still loves his first wife, and regularly goes down to the basement to bang her, and his affair partner is okay with this arrangement???
7. Uncle Luck told his niece Merit that he had already pictured her naked only a few minutes after they first met.
8. Uncle Luck agreed to his 17-year-old niece Merit's pleadings to help her lose her virginity, and they got *so close* to actually engaging in intercourse.
9. Uncle Luck set his sights on banging his nephew Utah instead, and they seem to have entered into a legit romantic relationship.
10. Merit wanted to buy that old beauty pageant trophy for the sole reason that it was expensive, not because it was pretty or any actual normal, understandable reason.
11. The dad put in a good solid decade of his life into hating a sweet, innocent good doggo to the point where his hatred greatly contributed to the destruction of his family unit.
12. Uncle Luck, upon finding out that Merit has clinical depression, compared being depressed to getting a sunburn.
13. Sagan is an official tattoo apprentice, yet he gave Merit a tattoo in an unsanitary bedroom and did not provide a single piece of aftercare instructions to her, letting her touch the fresh tattoo with her bare, unwashed hands a mere two days after its completion.
14. The twins have that barf-worthy, Tswift "she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts; the boy belongs with meeeee, the plain Jane loner nerd, not with the peppy cheerleader type" dynamic.
15. Merit steals and stockpile's her sick mother's medication to the point where she knows exactly how many pills (28) she has, and when she takes them all in one sitting in a so-called suicide attempt, barfs them up due to Sagan's intervention, and he takes it upon himself to sift through her vomit in order to count out exactly 28 pills.
16. Merit *dressed up in her twin's clothes and did her hair the way Honor does* and when Sagan walked in and believed Merit to be Honor, Merit decided the best course of action was to up the ante on her charade and kiss him.
17. Utah, in a desperate attempt to cure himself of being gay, grabbed the only girl he could think of and forced her to kiss him. That girl was Merit, his own flesh and blood little sister. EXCUSE ME???
18. Utah spent the next five years coexisting with Merit and never apologized or attempted to make up for his disgusting actions, because he'd simply hoped that she'd forgotten about the whole incident and had moved on, despite the fact that she spent that whole time afraid to ever be alone with him in the same room again for fear that he would assault her again.
19. Sagan has this whole tragic backstory of his parents and younger sister being left behind in Syria and he has no clue whether they're dead or alive, and this never has any sort of resolution or answers or elaboration on it??
20. Merit forgives Utah for forcing himself onto her, his own sister, with basically zero effort after he gave her one single apology in front of the whole family...
21. Merit dropped out of high school, but not in a "school really isn't the place I'm meant to be, so here is the official paperwork" way; she simply stopped showing up to school because a girl mistook her for her twin and she "realized" that if she disappeared, no one would miss her. Boo hoo.
22. The mother doesn't have cancer like all the children believed for years, but she is severely ill after a debilitating car accident. This was the big reveal, and after all the instances of incest in the narrative, this *gasp* what a tWiSt ""reveal"" barely registered as anything to take note of.
23. The pain pills that Merit swallowed like they were candy were all placebos, so in the end it didn't matter one lick how many she took them, they would not have killed her.
24. Merit wished she could go back in time to *KILL THE PASTOR'S DOG* that her father hated so much, just so that her life would become easier.
25. Merit just *happened* to run into Uncle Luck at the store and he asked her for a ride, not knowing who she was, that she's his niece, or that she lives in the same place as his sister Victoria. The sheer level of suspension of disbelief that this encounter takes in order to be credible is simply too much.
26. Uncle Luck has an entire notebook dedicated to how many people he's had sex with, and how many times. His niece Merit was entered into this notebook with the note "DNF" meaning "did not finish." The grand total is more than 100 sex partners, and over 300 instances of sexual encounters.
In conclusion, reading this horrendous mess of effery made me wish that I had been buried alive instead of deciding to endure this CoHo garbage.
In the same vein as the letter/list of grievances Merit aired out to her family members, here is my own list of things that made me stop in disgust and/or disbelief while reading this book:
1. The twins' names are Merit and Honor, and the brother is named Utah, while the uncle is named Luck, and the mother and the father's affair partner are both named Victoria. What.
2. This whole book is drenched in such OoOoOoOhhhhh I'm so ~*~Quirkyyyy~*~ energy, you simply can't escape it.
3. Sagan kissed Merit *without knowing who she was*, because he confused her with her identical twin sister, but he wasn't ever even dating the sister, so why did he spontaneously kiss her????
4. Sagan got a whole entire tattoo dedicated to the exact location (coordinates) of where he first kissed/met Merit a mere TWO WEEKS into knowing her, and he straight up told her that the more he got to actually know her as a person, the less he liked her. Bruh.
5. The father shacked up with his affair partner and knocked her up while his first wife was severely ill, and the three of them somehow coexist in the same house.
6. The father still loves his first wife, and regularly goes down to the basement to bang her, and his affair partner is okay with this arrangement???
7. Uncle Luck told his niece Merit that he had already pictured her naked only a few minutes after they first met.
8. Uncle Luck agreed to his 17-year-old niece Merit's pleadings to help her lose her virginity, and they got *so close* to actually engaging in intercourse.
9. Uncle Luck set his sights on banging his nephew Utah instead, and they seem to have entered into a legit romantic relationship.
10. Merit wanted to buy that old beauty pageant trophy for the sole reason that it was expensive, not because it was pretty or any actual normal, understandable reason.
11. The dad put in a good solid decade of his life into hating a sweet, innocent good doggo to the point where his hatred greatly contributed to the destruction of his family unit.
12. Uncle Luck, upon finding out that Merit has clinical depression, compared being depressed to getting a sunburn.
13. Sagan is an official tattoo apprentice, yet he gave Merit a tattoo in an unsanitary bedroom and did not provide a single piece of aftercare instructions to her, letting her touch the fresh tattoo with her bare, unwashed hands a mere two days after its completion.
14. The twins have that barf-worthy, Tswift "she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts; the boy belongs with meeeee, the plain Jane loner nerd, not with the peppy cheerleader type" dynamic.
15. Merit steals and stockpile's her sick mother's medication to the point where she knows exactly how many pills (28) she has, and when she takes them all in one sitting in a so-called suicide attempt, barfs them up due to Sagan's intervention, and he takes it upon himself to sift through her vomit in order to count out exactly 28 pills.
16. Merit *dressed up in her twin's clothes and did her hair the way Honor does* and when Sagan walked in and believed Merit to be Honor, Merit decided the best course of action was to up the ante on her charade and kiss him.
17. Utah, in a desperate attempt to cure himself of being gay, grabbed the only girl he could think of and forced her to kiss him. That girl was Merit, his own flesh and blood little sister. EXCUSE ME???
18. Utah spent the next five years coexisting with Merit and never apologized or attempted to make up for his disgusting actions, because he'd simply hoped that she'd forgotten about the whole incident and had moved on, despite the fact that she spent that whole time afraid to ever be alone with him in the same room again for fear that he would assault her again.
19. Sagan has this whole tragic backstory of his parents and younger sister being left behind in Syria and he has no clue whether they're dead or alive, and this never has any sort of resolution or answers or elaboration on it??
20. Merit forgives Utah for forcing himself onto her, his own sister, with basically zero effort after he gave her one single apology in front of the whole family...
21. Merit dropped out of high school, but not in a "school really isn't the place I'm meant to be, so here is the official paperwork" way; she simply stopped showing up to school because a girl mistook her for her twin and she "realized" that if she disappeared, no one would miss her. Boo hoo.
22. The mother doesn't have cancer like all the children believed for years, but she is severely ill after a debilitating car accident. This was the big reveal, and after all the instances of incest in the narrative, this *gasp* what a tWiSt ""reveal"" barely registered as anything to take note of.
23. The pain pills that Merit swallowed like they were candy were all placebos, so in the end it didn't matter one lick how many she took them, they would not have killed her.
24. Merit wished she could go back in time to *KILL THE PASTOR'S DOG* that her father hated so much, just so that her life would become easier.
25. Merit just *happened* to run into Uncle Luck at the store and he asked her for a ride, not knowing who she was, that she's his niece, or that she lives in the same place as his sister Victoria. The sheer level of suspension of disbelief that this encounter takes in order to be credible is simply too much.
26. Uncle Luck has an entire notebook dedicated to how many people he's had sex with, and how many times. His niece Merit was entered into this notebook with the note "DNF" meaning "did not finish." The grand total is more than 100 sex partners, and over 300 instances of sexual encounters.
In conclusion, reading this horrendous mess of effery made me wish that I had been buried alive instead of deciding to endure this CoHo garbage.