Losing Hope by Colleen Hoover, published October 2013 by Atria Books.

Read: February 2015
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary/Romance/Issues
Source: Gifted
#Pages: 321
Get It Now: Wordery

Goodreads Synopsis: In Hopeless, Sky left no secret unearthed, no feeling unshared, and no memory forgotten, but Holder’s past remained a mystery.

Still haunted by the little girl he let walk away, Holder has spent his entire life searching for her in an attempt to finally rid himself of the crushing guilt he has felt for years. But he could not have anticipated that the moment they reconnect, even greater remorse would overwhelm him…

The Review

After reading and really enjoying Hopeless by Colleen Hoover, I planned to take a little break before reading Losing Hope as I knew it was based on the same story but told from Holder’s perspective. I lasted all of a couple of hours before picking it up though, I just couldn’t resist. I really enjoyed this novel, but not quite as much as the first one, which I think is always the case with companion novels that cover the same plot-lines.

When I finished Hopeless I really wasn’t ready to leave these characters behind, which was why I was so excited to be able to go straight into Losing Hope. I love that it’s told from Holder’s perspective, as I enjoy and want to read more contemporaries told from a male POV, and as Holder has his own fare share of secrets going on, I was looking forward to the chance to get inside his head.

I can imagine writing two books that cover quite a similar storyline but from two different perspectives is tough, how do you keep it fresh and keep the reader interested? Hoover managed this quite effortlessly by including diary-entries that serve as letters to Holder’s sister, Les. They are wonderful, heart-breaking and offer such an insight into Holder as a character. Hoover also gives Holder’s BFF, Daniel, much more page time, and his humour was a welcome relief throughout the book. I love that after reading both of these books you have a clear picture of the relationship between Sky and Holder – how it started, how it developed, how both characters were feeling during certain critical plot-points. I LOVED this.

I have to say though, because I read this book so soon after Hopeless, I did skim read certain sections that were practically the same in both novels. The original story was very fresh in my mind, and I didn’t have the patience to read through the sections verbatim. As soon as I finished this read I went ahead and downloaded the companion novella Finding Cinderella, and devoured it just as quickly (mini-review to follow!).

There’s not much in it, but overall I did prefer Hopeless slightly more to Losing Hope, but that’s mostly because the story was so fresh and new to me when I read the first book. In my opinion, the Hopeless series is best read, considered and rated on a whole. The pieces fit together so well, that the series overall rates much higher for me than each novel on its own.

Quotables:

“But I’ve learned over the past year what it really means to be able to miss someone. In order to miss someone, that means you were privileged enough to have them in your life to begin with.”

““I wonder if it’s possible for people to fall in love with a person one characteristic at a time, or if you fall for the entire person at once.”

“I call her Val because it’s short for Valium and I always tell her she needs to take that shit by the bucketful. I wasn’t lying when I said she was fucking crazy.”

The Rating

4/5

Have you read Hopeless and/or Losing Hope? What did you think of the companion novels? Let me know in the comments!