Colleen Hoover

"There is no such thing as bad people. We're all just people who sometimes do bad things."

"The only thing I want out of life is success. Lots of it. But if I admit that out loud to anyone, it makes me sound arrogant."

Like most people, I had seen the hype around this book and heard about this shocking ending. Talk about disappointing. While I don't want to downplay someone being brave enough to leave an abuser, that wasn't really a shocking ending. I kept waiting for something massive to happen. Also, there are elements of the story that aren't very realistic. As someone who grew up in a household featuring a decent amount of domestic violence, I'm pretty confident that Lily wouldn't have taken many of the risks that she did when it came to Atlas, during their youth. She is unlikely to have risked giving him her father's clothes or let him in the house while others are there. And even if you want to argue that she wasn't worried about herself because her father (apart from the car incident) hadn't been physically abusive to her, that's true, but she wouldn't have created the risk for her mother. Because make no doubt about it, her actions, if found out, would have been taken out on her mother. I'll give Colleen Hoover two points though -- one for the way the self-doubting was portrayed and two for the car incident, it was pretty spot on in creating the tension that is felt in those situations simply by the atmosphere that is created rather than specific words that are said.

This was my second Colleen Hoover book and the other I really enjoyed, so I won't discard her completely. But when it comes to Lily's story, I've read enough.… (plus d'informations)

This book captured a piece of my soul. It’s about first love and broken heart bones and family and fathers. It’s about this intense time in life when we make decisions that determine the trajectory of our adult lives while feeling emotions rush over us more powerfully than we ever have or ever will, like a tidal wave washing over us unexpectedly. It’s about so many things, but my favorite part is that it’s a love letter to the ocean and sunrises on the beach, the place where the salt and sand and wind refill our weary souls.

“Seeing the ocean in person is almost as important as having food and shelter. It doesn’t seem farfetched to believe a charity should exist for the sole purpose of allowing people to afford a trip to the beach. It should be a basic human right. A necessity. It’s like years of therapy, rolled up into a view” (41).… (plus d'informations)