You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
darlingbookreader 's review for:
Without Merit
by Colleen Hoover
3 stars.
Sigh. This review hurts my soul because I’m a big CoHo fan and I always defend her books, even the controversial ones, so while I really wanted to love this book…I just didn’t. This story is very different than CoHo’s usual style. It’s more of a coming to age and family secrets hit a breaking point kind of story. But I didn’t realize that going into this and especially not when I read the first chapter which had me instantly hooked. I thought this was going to be another epic CoHo love story. And while there was romance, it just wasn’t the center piece of the story.
This story focuses on the Voss family and all their secrets and dysfunction. Merit (our heroine), Honor (sister), Utah (brother), Moby (half brother), Sagan (love interest), Loc (uncle), Victoria (mother AND step mother’s name), and Merit’s dad. This family harbors lots of secrets that only Merit seems to know/keep and the secrets aren’t pretty. Merit hates her father for cheating on their mother while she had cancer, her and her sister don’t get along and her sister has her own issues falling in love with only boys dying, she and her brother can’t stand to be in the same together, and she feels abandoned that her mother won’t come up from the basement.
As the secrets are revealed, even more secrets surface, loads of miscommunication are revealed and everyone realizes they are assholes who have only been concerned with themselves. I had a hard time liking any of the characters in this book, I really only liked Sagan but I liked Sagan by himself and not as a love interest. This story dealt with very heavy topics (suicide, depression, homophobia, incest, affairs, agoraphobia, child assault, etc.) and it felt like maybe it was too much in one story with not a ton of resolution.
Sigh. This review hurts my soul because I’m a big CoHo fan and I always defend her books, even the controversial ones, so while I really wanted to love this book…I just didn’t. This story is very different than CoHo’s usual style. It’s more of a coming to age and family secrets hit a breaking point kind of story. But I didn’t realize that going into this and especially not when I read the first chapter which had me instantly hooked. I thought this was going to be another epic CoHo love story. And while there was romance, it just wasn’t the center piece of the story.
This story focuses on the Voss family and all their secrets and dysfunction. Merit (our heroine), Honor (sister), Utah (brother), Moby (half brother), Sagan (love interest), Loc (uncle), Victoria (mother AND step mother’s name), and Merit’s dad. This family harbors lots of secrets that only Merit seems to know/keep and the secrets aren’t pretty. Merit hates her father for cheating on their mother while she had cancer, her and her sister don’t get along and her sister has her own issues falling in love with only boys dying, she and her brother can’t stand to be in the same together, and she feels abandoned that her mother won’t come up from the basement.
As the secrets are revealed, even more secrets surface, loads of miscommunication are revealed and everyone realizes they are assholes who have only been concerned with themselves. I had a hard time liking any of the characters in this book, I really only liked Sagan but I liked Sagan by himself and not as a love interest. This story dealt with very heavy topics (suicide, depression, homophobia, incest, affairs, agoraphobia, child assault, etc.) and it felt like maybe it was too much in one story with not a ton of resolution.