Reviews with content warning for Panic attacks/disorders - Too Late

Reviews tagging 'Panic attacks/disorders'

Too Late by Colleen Hoover

11 reviews

pageturner19's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Please be mindful of the trigger warnings - Heavy Drug use, Mental Health, Domestic Abuse, S-Assault, non- consensual.

This was a solid 3- 3.5 for me, I don't think this one was as dark as Ugly love or Verity but was equally a very powerful read.

The strength Sloane has to have to withstand Acer was heartbreaking. I think unless you've been in her position it's hard to fully see the emotional heartbreak of some of the scenes in this book.

A tragic end but I felt the emotions of the ups and downs of this story. Recommend for people who don't mind triggers are in a good mental state.

All characters I found to be very well written and felt like they were real people, not just fictional beings.

The storyline was medium to fast paced, easy to follow. The Audiobook voice actors helped to bring the characters emotions and personalities to life and I enjoyed it more than I would think to read it.

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laura__maclean's review against another edition

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1.5

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michellebub's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

At first I was going to dnf this but then I thought, I should actually finish this out of spite and hate, and give this a terrible review (two stars is my idea of a terrible review).
I don’t read dark romance or whatever genre this fits in.
So I guess this will be full of spoilers.(this might be more of a summary)

The book begins with Sloan being raped in her sleep. She woke up because of the thrusts and then started to moan and put her legs around him, so it would get over faster. Asa, the antagonist, and her boyfriend does this daily. They only discuss this like 90% into the book and Finally say that it is rape and that she actually does not want it. Sloan is a sorry excuse of an fmc, we actually don’t get any descriptions of any character, so we don’t know how she looks. All I know is that she is supposed to be this sweet, innocent, naive girl who accidentally got involved with a drug dealer who manages the biggest drug ring on campus.
AND the poor, poor (literally) girl also had a shitty childhood. She had two twin brothers who both had disabilities due to their mother being a drug addict and not being able to stop during the pregnancy. Needless to say, their mom was a deadbeat who was barely there and never truly took care of the boys even though they needed it. As a result, Sloan has to take care of her brothers.

One of them died when he was ten.

< The other now lives in a facility where they take care of him 24/7. Trust me, this will become important later in the story.

Now on to Asa. Much like Sloan, he also had a traumatic childhood. His father was a diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic who refused to take his medication. Throughout the book we get many insights on how this actually affected Asa. His father used to tell him that all women were whores, especially Asa’s mother. He also said that women only cry as a form of manipulation and that he should learn early that tears mean nothing. We also get to see how his mental illness impacted him.

Once Asa’s father got so paranoid, that he thought there were men at their front door coming after him, it wasn’t a rare occurrence that he thought there were men coming after him but never that they were actually at their door. So he told little Asa that he should hide under the house. Then he proceeded to forget that he was there. Asa lied there for more than 24H before he went up and checked if his dad got killed by the men, which he was not. Well if that weren’t enough, Asa’s father also killed his mother and then hid her under house, don’t worry she was found and he was convicted. So this left Asa to be practically an orphan.

I would love to say that all of this might be an excuse for his behavior, but obviously it is not. Comparing Sloan and Asa you notice that they both had traumatic childhoods but ended up on opposite ends, she became this innocent lamb who got too scared to trust others, but at the same time was the sweetest to everyone (

she always cleaned up after Asa and the whole house, made his favorite food and generally did everything he wanted, she is a people pleaser but also deadly scared of him

), meanwhile Asa just became some sort of drug lord who terrorizes everyone surrounding him.

Now to the actual complains and well, Carter/luke.
Luke is supposed to be a FBI- agent who is working undercover to gather information on Asa. But sadly he is terrible at his job. He falls in love with the girlfriend of his subject, Asa. Truly stupid, how can you fuck up this much, like anyone except for him would’ve been better. No professionalism, whatsoever.
I wish I could say more about Carter but honestly we don’t get to know him. His only charm seems to be that he is not Asa, he is a good guy. Even though Sloan got to know him as just another drug dealer who is working for Asa, but he didn’t act like the others. He cared for her, he wants her to be safe, without Asa, because he knows he is dangerous, he wants her out of this mess, ultimately he protects her. He is so to say everything she needs at that time. Of course she falls Inlove with him, she’s never been treated better.
Literally, she never got treated better

Asa was her first everything, kiss, sex, relationship, maybe orgasm. He was the first guy to actually treat her well (he was pretending, love bombing). So she fell for him. But as soon as she found out that he is a drug dealer, she left him. But then they got back together because he promised to pay for her brothers care.
HE SENT HER FAKE LETTERS FROM THE FACILITY TELLING HER THAT THE GOVERNMENT PAY WAS NO LONGER HAPPENING, ALL FOR HER TO GET BACK WITH HIM.
So, in short, he is obsessed with her, he needs to be the only one to have ever touched her, or well been in her. He is downright delusional, probably because he inherited the mental illness from his dad. But when I say obsessed I mean he would kill for her if anyone touched or looked at her the wrong way, well if he noticed. So when he got suspicious about Sloan and Carter he got mad, both the cuckoo and angry meaning. The irony in this is that he frequently cheats on her. But that is different of course, because for men it is purely physical, for women though it is emotional, which means actual cheating.

When I found out this book was written and published on wattpad, It all started to make sense. The dense characters, every chapter being made for shock value, and the excessive sex content. Honestly I shouldn’t be surprised about the last one. Colleen Hoover does not know how to write a book without unnecessary sex scenes, she even had them in her thriller “verity”. I don’t know why I keep reading her books, I thought that maybe she might be better or at least different when trying new genres, but it wasn’t. This was worse than verity. While reading this, I just thought to myself “ I should dnf this, I cannot believe I am doing this to myself. AND WHY IS EVERY CHARACTER SO FUCKING STUPID, at least Asa was interesting, his delusions seemed entertaining. But at least I now can say with 100% certainty that this is the last Colleen Hoover book I’ll ever read.
But if you decide to read this good luck.

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exhaustedmumma's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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sierrabowers's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

I thought this book was slow at the beginning and I was trying really hard to like it despite the simple writing style and my bias toward the author. I am happy to say that halfway through the book, the story took a wild turn and carried me through until the very end with unexpected twists and turns! I finished this book so fast and the only reason I rated it less than 5 stars is because of the slow start. I also didn’t like how fast the two main characters “fell in love”. Literally it was like a week or two. They just met! Other than that, it was amazing and I would recommend to anyone that likes thrillers.

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