REVIEW: Colleen Hoover Part One: Heart Bones & All Your Perfects

Heart Bones:

Heart Bones is about a girl named Beyah. Beyah’s mother and father had her when they were very young and split after her birth. Beyah’s mother then became a drug addict using every piece of money that she could get out of Beyah’s dad to pay for it and he didn’t realise that this was happening due to his strained relationship with Beyah. One night, Beyah’s mother overdoses and dies and Beyah now has to result to living with her father before going to college in the autumn. One thing though, she keeps her mothers death a secret from her father and says that she just wants to visit him for the summer. Beyah’s dad has remarried and now Beyah has a step sister. They initially don’t get a long due to Beyah’s hesitancy but eventually find a common ground. Whilst living with her father on a peninsula in Texas, Beyah meets some of her step sisters friends, including a guy named Samson. He comes from a life full of wealth whereas she doesn’t. They somehow are attracted to each other and find that they have a connection with each other that neither of them to deny but maybe this summer romance isn’t supposed to last after all.

I absolutely loved this book. I was in the mood for some contemporary romance and Colleen Hoover is one of the best for that so I turned and looked at some of her newer releases that I haven’t read yet and found this beauty. This story is one of love, family, loss and heartbreak in exactly that order. Hoover’s writing as always is phenomenal and she definitely has a way of writing such relatable characters that are messy and heartbroken. Beyah’s relationship with her family is one that is hard to begin with but she realises that they are truly there for her even through everything that she has experienced and they only want the best for her.

4 out of 5 stars.

All Your Perfects:

All your Perfects centres around Quinn and her future husband Graham. The two meet outside of Quinn’s soon to be husband where it is revealed that her fiancé is cheating on her with Graham’s girlfriend. Graham is there to confront the two of them about their affair. This is when Quinn arrives home early from a work trip to surprise her fiancé and this is when Graham has to be the one to tell her the news that he is cheating on her. After breaking up with her fiancé, she finds herself attracted to Graham who also knows how it feels to be cheated on and find themselves hanging out. But they lose contact because she doesn’t want to admit what truly happened to her but find each other again after a series of weird and peculiar meetings. This leads Quinn to believe that she was meant to be with Graham after all and that there are no coincidences in this world.

A few years later, it is revealed that the two of them married and had a good beginning of marriage until they tried to start conceiving a baby, Quinn can simply not conceive a baby and this takes a toll on their relationship. Sex becomes a chore and Quinn feels like she lacks the intimacy that she once had with her husband but cannot put any emotions into it anymore because of what heart ache comes out of the realisation that she isn’t pregnant. She bottles it up and cries to herself in the shower. They try IVF and fertility treatments but nothing works, this also comes with a strained relationship with her mother who also happens to be wealthy means that she can’t ask her mother for the money to help. This book tells the story of Quinn and Graham and about their struggles with fertility and whether their relationship can truly last throughout the pain and the suffering.

This book is told through the narrative of a then and now format. Meaning that we get to see the beginning of their love in the then and in the now, we get to read about their struggle with fertility. Hoover flicks backwards and forwards between the two meaning that we get to see the characters struggle throughout and their mindsets in the two different time settings. Overall, this book is heart-breaking and but tells of the tale that real people struggle with and how hard it can be.

4 out of 5 stars.