Without Merit by Colleen Hoover - Reshelved Books

Hello Dewey Readers!

Those are clean tissues I crinkled up... I promise....

I'm sorry I've been M.I.A.  Life has been CRAZY, but I have been reading, just nothing review worthy.  My last review was on Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us, which I adored.  Surprise, surprise, this review is also about a book by Colleen Hoover.  I'm in love with Colleen Hoover.  I can't get enough.  I'm bookishly addicted.  Maybe I need rehab...

Without Merit is Hoover's latest novel, which I found while perusing the new shelf at my public library.  Everyone should go to their library right now and look at the new shelf.  I know that Hoover writes New Adult Fiction (N.A.) but I wasn't sure that this novel quite fit that category.  To me, it seemed like more of a young adult (Y.A.) fiction novel primarily because instead of having characters in their 20s, Hoover has main characters who are 17-19 years old.   Interesting to me, because all of the local libraries had this book shelved with their adult fiction collection...

Anyway, back to the book.  In this novel we meet Merit.  Merit has a twin sister named Honor and the two are COMPLETELY different.  Honor is into makeup and boys who are near their death bed, and Merit is socially awkward, a little bit borderline depressed, and collects trophies in which she buys every time something bad or embarrassing happens to her.   So one day while Merit is skipping school and eyeing up a trophy at the local antique shop, she runs into this older guy who kisses her.  WHY DOES A STRANGE MAN KISS HER?  Well, he thought Merit was Honor.  *Ba da bum!*

But if that's not embarrassing enough, this man, who goes by the name of Sagan, moves into her home.  She can't escape the embarrassment.  He's eating breakfast at her kitchen table!  Her family is a mess!  Her mother, who had battled cancer lives in the basement after her father slept with her mother's nurse and got her pregnant / married her, the family is looked down upon by town members after her atheist father bought a church and renovated it into a home, none of the siblings actually talk to Honor, and Honor doesn't appear to like them very much either.  

So, if you're looking for a read that's part soap opera, part romance, and part individual and familial mental disorder, pick this novel up.   I would give it 5 out of 5 Coffee Beans.  

And until the next read, which I promise will be something different from Hoover... (even though I just bought a new one)... Happy Reading!        

~Jessica