November 9

In Five Words or Less: Hopeless romance you will adore.

Plot: Fallon, once a teenage idol, is a has-been thanks to a fire her father started just two years earlier. The scars she received had not only thrown her out of celebrity status, but caused her to lose all self-esteem. Then comes Ben.

Ben, an aspiring author and self-proclaimed F up, falls infatuated with Fallon the day before she is set to move to the opposite coast. Fallon doesn't believe in falling in love until she's 23, but finds something in Ben too hard to resist. They agree to only talk/see/meet once a year on November 9.

The Good:

The Writing: This is the first Colleen Hoover book I picked up and it certainly will not be the last. She draws you in and kills you with anticipation. I did suspend some belief, but she made it easy to accept.

Glass Case of Emotion:



The bad part of listening to an audio book is when the book gets good/rough/antsy, so do I... at work. I laughed. I cried. I worried. I glared at my coworkers when they came to talk to me. The emotional roller coaster is a love/hate relationship, but it's so worth it. (My coworkers don't hate me for it...)

Forget Realism: The characters are neurotic, but some how stick to their agreement of seeing each other only once a year? Uh, yeah.. sure... This is not realistic; however, Hoover makes it easy to suspend our disbelief and I love her for it.

The Bad:

Maturity: I have a hard time believing that these characters are 18 through 23 years old. I was way cray as a teen. I was not head strong enough to jump into somebody's life and definitely not patient enough to wait for somebody I am infatuated with. I know, I know.. this is petty and the direct relationship to myself if unrealistic.. It's just that these characters have a maturity level I wouldn't expect of those their age (and that is factoring in their neurotic moments).

On second thought.. I grew up in a town that has a large amount of teen mothers. Maybe their maturity is simply atypical to us. You'll have to tell me what you think ;)

My Favorite Quotes:

After Ben's (soon to be) sister-in-law walks in on Ben and Fallon:

“I'm so sorry” someone is saying as Ben pulls me into the kitchen, “I had no idea you were home and I was looking for scissors but you are home and she's definitely not a pair of scissors.