Review: Without Merit
- Jan 11, 2018
- 2 min read
Colleen Hoover
🌟🌟🌟🌟
Read: 12/17/18 - 12/18/17
I had read only one Colleen Hoover book previously, It Ends With Us. It Ends With Us won 2016 Goodreads Best Romance. It was listed as a contemporary romance and dealt with adult issues. So I was expecting something similar when Without Merit won 2017 Goodreads Best Romance. But I was confused as I was reading, and thinking “This reads like a YA.” So I looked. “Ah, that's why. Because it is a YA.”
The book is heavy with the themes of a “normal” family and secrets. Merit’s family is not typical. She lives with dad, stepmom, sister, brother and half-brother. In a church. And her agoraphobic mother lives in the basement.
Merit is tired of being the holder of all her family’s secrets. Merit looks at her family’s dynamics and how the relationships are built around secrets they keep from each other. Like, how her relationship with her brother, Utah, is strained but her twin sister, Honor, is very close to him. When she decides to reveal everyone's secrets and her plan to leave goes awry, she has to deal with the fall out.
I liked the decision Colleen Hoover made to have the heavier topics lightened up by the YA style of writing.
“Nevermind the fact that Wolfgang's head is in my lap and now Sagan’s hand is touching something on my lap and what is oxygen?”
I laughed at this line and realized that the feelings you feel during a crush are the same no matter your age. But Merit kinda reminded me of Anna from Frozen, the love at first sight princess. She knows absolutely nothing about Sagan but loves him.I felt like Elsa, thinking “You can't marry someone you just met.”
While I can see why Without Merit won a 2017 Goodreads category, I just don't think it should have won for romance. The book was so much more about family dynamics than romance.
Comments