Sunday, October 29, 2017

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33280872-without-merit

I have a weird relationship with Colleen Hoover’s books. On one hand, I usually enjoy them because they’re very compelling and readable, however, on the other hand, there can be problematic elements in them that make me question why I keep reading these books. I didn’t find Without Merit as compelling as I hoped I would, and it left a bit to be desired.
 
Merit is kissed by a boy who shakes her whole world, unfortunately, she’s pretty sure he’s the boyfriend of her twin. The twin she’s really not that close with. She’s not very close with anyone in her family because of something that occurred when she was a bit younger. There is a lot of build-up to the ‘event’ with her family, and it takes a while to find out why Merit and her family do not mesh very well. It’s a disturbing revelation when it’s finally revealed, too.
 
I found it hard to like any of the characters, and I didn’t connect to any of them, which is important to me. They were all either shallow, selfish, inconsiderate, or all three. They didn’t treat each other like a family should, and it bothered me when suddenly they were able to resolve all their issues.   There were a lot of issues in this book, but none of them were handled or resolved very well. This book tries to deal with divorce, suicide, incest, abuse, and that’s only a few of them. It just seemed like there was too much going on. I didn’t understand the addition of Luck, either. He didn’t add anything to the story. Can we please talk about the names in this book, too? Merit, Honor, Luck, Sagan, and Utah. It’s silly, but the names bothered me.
 
I will probably keep reading Hoover’s books, but this one fell short for me.  I read It Ends With Us recently by Hoover, and really enjoyed that one.
 
A copy of this book was provided by Simon and Schuster Canada, but as always opinions remain my own.

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