Without Merit by Colleen Hoover Published by Atria Books on October 3rd 2017
Genres: Contemporary Romance, New Adult
Format: ebook, paperback
Source: Purchased
Purchase @ AMAZON or BN
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Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness.
The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.
Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.
Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.
Angie’s Thoughts:
I’ve never not liked a Colleen Hoover book but there’s always a first. Let’s start out with what I liked before I list what I didn’t like.
Likes:
- I loved Sagen. I wish we had read more of story. More of him. He’s intriguing and mysterious and I wanted to crawl into his brain. I also think he was senile for staying with such a dysfunctional family but I understood at the same time.
- I loved some of the scenes with Luck then with Utah and Luck. Luck is a funny guy and I looked forward to reading the small scenes that he was featured in.
- I also loved that Colleen portrayed herself as the crazy Diet Pepsi bookstore worker. That gave me a good chuckle.
- I liked some of the drama but not all of it. There was a lot of drama.
Dislikes:
- I hated the blatant disrespect that was showed to Jesus in this book. The names that he was being called sent shivers down my spine. For someone who claims that she wasn’t atheist (Merit) you sure couldn’t tell that. I put the book down and almost didn’t continue because of this.
- I didn’t like Merit. I think if this book was written about Honor then I would’ve loved it but that’s just a personal preference. Merit was extremely childish and acted out like a two year would.
- I wish some of the issues wouldn’t have been glossed over. Depression and attempted suicide are very serious. When one attempts suicide, regardless if the pills are placebos, you will be mandated to stay in the hospital mental ward to make sure you are ok and will not attempt suicide again. That bothered me. I don’t want anyone to think that if you throw up pills you’ll be ok. You still need to go to the hospital.
- I hated that there was so much drama. Some is ok. That makes a book but when you add in more issues than one book can deal with then it becomes too much. I was left with more questions and being unfulfilled.
It took me 5 days to read Without Merit. It normally only takes me hours. I don’t like to DNF a book so I pushed through. I really wish I didn’t read it at all. I hate writing negative reviews and get no pleasure out of doing so.
Liezel’s Thoughts:
I do have to admit – I have not read all of Colleen Hoover’s books but the ones that I have, I thoroughly enjoyed with Without Merit, unfortunately, being the exception.
From the very beginning, the story made me feel extremely uncomfortable. As the story went on I thought I would be able to get over the disrespect for the church but my unease never went away.
I knew then that because of this very reason it would be difficult for me to enjoy but I pushed through because it is, after all, a Colleen Hoover book. Needless to say, it took me about 60% to actually feel something for this dysfunctional family.
In the end, the depression, suicide attempt, incest, adultery, dealing with bisexuality and whatever Honor was doing ( can’t even categorize what that was) was a bit much for me. I felt like there were a lot of the issues that were left unresolved and this why I too rate this book a…
The Verdict:
About Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels and five novellas. Hoover’s novels fall into the New Adult and Young Adult contemporary romance categories.
Hoover published her first novel, Slammed, in January 2012. Since then, all her eligible works have become New York Times best sellers.
Colleen Hoover is published by Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Colleen also has several self-published titles.
In 2013, Colleen’s third novel, Hopeless, was the first self-published novel to reach #1 on The New York Times, where it remained for several weeks. Hopeless went on to become one of the top 20 bestselling ebooks of 2013.
In 2015, Colleen’s novel CONFESS won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance. That was followed up in 2016 with her latest title, It Ends With Us, also winning the Choice Award for Best Romance.
Her novel CONFESS has been filmed as a series by Awestruck and is due to release this spring on go90. Katie Leclerc and Ryan Cooper star in the series.
Ugly Love is slated to begin filming in late 2017.
Colleen founded The Bookworm Box, a charity subscription service and bookstore, with her family in 2015. The Bookworm Box is a subscription service that provides readers with an exciting opportunity to receive signed novels in the mail each month from authors all over the world. All profits from the subscription service are donated to various charities each month. To date, The Bookworm Box has donated over $850,000 to help those in need.
Colleen’s next release is WITHOUT MERIT, a contemporary romance novel due to release through Atria Books in October, 2017.
Colleen’s current work-in-progress is an exciting revisit to a previous novel, not yet announced, due to release in early 2018.
