Reviews with content warning for Physical abuse - Hopeless

Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

24 reviews

paperbackmystique_and_co's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Spoiler

Just...I don't have words

This actually was an incredibly difficult read. I didn't read any trigger warnings before going into this one, and OH BOY do I wish I had.

I don't know how Colleen Hoover writes what she does and if she's experienced some of the completely heartwrenching topics she takes on in her books, but she sincerely does an amazing job creating characters and writing these plots to help people relate to characters that feel REAL.

At this point, I'm just throwing around 5 star ratings like it's going out of style, and though this book was quite slow at times, which I don't often experience with a CoHo book I still really enjoyed it.

"He reacts the way he does because there’s only one side to Dean Holder.

Passionate.

He’s passionate about life, about love, about his words, about Les. And I’ll be damned if I wasn’t just added to his list. The intensity he conveys isn’t unnerving…it’s beautiful. I’ve gone so long trying to find ways to feel numb any chance I get, but seeing the enthusiasm behind his eyes right now…it makes me want to feel every single thing about life. The good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the pleasure, the pain. I want that. I want to start feeling life the same way he does. And my first step to doing so starts with this hopeless boy in front of me who’s pouring his heart out, searching for that perfect word, wanting desperately to help me add feeling back into living.

Back into living."

"He fills me with his honesty, his love for me, and for a moment…he fills me with a piece of our forevers. I grasp his shoulders and move with him, feeling everything. Every single beautiful thing"

"We wrap our arms around each other and we cry. We cry mother to daughter. We cry aunt to niece. We cry victim to victim. We cry survivor to survivor."

“You know sometimes when your daddy makes you cry?”

I nod my head and try not to cry just thinking about it. I don’t know how Dean knows that my daddy is always the reason why I’m crying, but he does.

“Will you promise me that when he makes you sad, you’ll think about the sky?”

I don’t know why he wants me to promise him that but I nod anyway. “But why?”

“Because.” He turns his face back up to the stars. “The sky is always beautiful. Even when it’s dark or rainy or cloudy, it’s still beautiful to look at. It’s my favorite thing because I know if I ever get lost or lonely or scared, I just have to look up and it’ll be there no matter what...and I know it’ll always be beautiful. It’s what you can think about when your daddy is making you sad, so you don’t have to think about him.”

Spoiler

Content Warnings

bookowl88's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

1.0

I know I’m In the minority here but I really had a hard time finishing this book. I really didn’t like it at all and I have read a lot of Colleen Hoover books so I’m sorry to say this is my least favorite.
First: It is excruciatingly slow. In the beginning we meet Sky, a homeschooled teenage girl who sneaks boys into her room at night to make out with them but doesn’t feel a thing.
Second: The male love interest is a secretive moody guy who randomly has rage attacks and treats Hope like crap and she never questions him. It’s maddening to watch a female character just go along with a guy she doesn’t know very well and completely not questions his moods or how he treats her in them.
Third: The dialogue is very childish sometimes and wayyy to cheesy to be believable.

Spoiler

Fourth: What this book really end up being about is childhood sexual trauma and the entire way it’s handled is very frustrating. Basically if you find yourself a moody, angsty hot teenage boy who will have sex with you the moment you find out something traumatic you will get through anything life throws you. You don’t need mental health counselors or professional help, just get a horny teenage boy and whoops there goes all that trauma.
I really love Colleen Hoover and I’m sad that I couldn’t like this one. But it really was just unbelievable and I just couldn’t like this book for the fourth reason alone.

Content Warnings

cass_booktok's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

The book started off really slow. I can't even tell you how many times I almost DNF'd this book. The chapters were just boring in the beginning, but Colleen Hoover is definitely the queen of plot twists because every time I wanted to shut the book out if frustration, she came up with something that kept me wanting to read. I do think that this book is necessary, it sends out the right message for girls who might have gone through something extremely traumatic like Sky went through, I honestly expected this book to be a romance and let me tell you. The romance in the way that I usually read is not up there but it still is a good book, well written, just very slow, slow in the same way It Starts With Us is.

Content Warnings

blynn343's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Content Warnings

gabbysletsread's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

This book went from almost being my favorite book to well, not. The first 60% of the book was amazing but as the truth unfolded things became too much to handle. Trigger warnings are super important with this book. I wish I had looked up trigger warnings for this book... Lets just say the triggers kept adding up. Too much trauma piled up all at once. The ending was good but I cant look at it solely over a good ending and a good start.

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charlie29's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Spoiler

absolutely adored it, couldn’t put it down!!! definitely, one of the most messed up CoHo books but liked the subplot. this book had me screaming, crying, loving, everything. at one point the plot twists just didn't stop coming, like literally every other page there would be a pot twist

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hiraeth_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

0.25

i don't even know where to start with this book. one thing is sure and that is that i need a break from colleen hoover books, i can't do it anymore.

i honestly don't even want to go into it because it's mostly the usual stuff wrong with her books - problematic display of relationships and mental illnesses, toxic masculinity, token non-straight characters, her trying to be funny but failing, the mc being not like other girls etc. i know it's one of her earlier works but it's honestly scary how she hasn't changed/learned from some things. and can you imagine this being marketed as a young adult novel?? with very triggering sexual content, abuse, suicide etc.?? reading this was a roller coaster of being weirded out, cringing, rolling my eyes and just getting angry. especially the last quarter is just pure trauma porn and i almost dnf'ed it. wtf colleen.

do not recommend. 🙃

Content Warnings

a_alves00's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

xlaraxk's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

1.0

I wanted to read one of Colleen Hoover's book to see what the hype is all about. Unfortunately, I really cannot understand why people would want to read this. This book has just so many issues and was just not sexy or romantic at any point.

The writing: The writing in this book was so bland. Nothing about it was clever or original or showed linguistic talent. Any AO3 or Wattpad writer could do better than this. CoHo really tries to hammer the youthfulness of the characters home by constantly using the phrase "xy sucks ass", "this sucks ass", "he sucks ass" etc. To introduce direct speech she constantly uses "he/she says" so it gets repetitive easily. The comparisons she makes are also strange and could even be considered offensive (e.g." He looked at me like I just said I have a penis"). All in all, the writing was not the worst thing I ever read but just straight up boring - something you will have read a hundred times by now.

The characters: Again, just bland. I could not tell you anything about the main character Sky or Holder in regards to their personality. They all have one character trait only - Holder is "misunderstood", Sky likes to read and that's about it. I do not even understand why they liked each other in the first place

Spoiler

apart from knowing each other from childhood

. Her mum's only distinctive traits is that she's a vegan and that she does not like technology, nothing more.

The problematic aspects: Oh, there are so many.

This book depicts queer, especially gay people, so stereotypically. Colleen Hoover wants to tell us how much of an ally both Holder and Sky are yet to fail to see Sky's friend as anything more than his personality. We've all seen some rendition of "the extroverted quirky gay best friend" in a book or a film - again, nothing original about it. I'm really sick of seeing this stereotype being brought up over and over again.
Sky has so much internalised misogyny. Her only issue seems to constantly tell the read that she, in fact, is not a slut. The "slut" topic plays a big part in the beginning of the book and then weirdly is never brought up again later. But in any case, she tries to "not be like other girls" by calling other girls either a slut, stupid or manipulative.
Holder does not know about consent. There are some scenes where Sky is clearly uncomfortable with their physical intimacy (at one point she even tells him no "forcefully") but he keeps on pressuring her. He's emotionally manipulative and that's not romantic or cute in any way.
Just the plot in general. There is some serious trauma going on but it is "fixed" by a romantic relationship. That's just not what you should convey to a young audience. If you really want to read this book, please make sure to take a look at the trigger warnings.

Content Warnings

nadia4973's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

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