Tuesday, 3 October 2017

✪ WITHOUT MERIT ✪ Colleen Hoover ✪

© Bianca Janeane ✰ 



• 3 October 2017
• 384 pages
• YA Romance / Family drama / coming of age etc. ☺

★★★★
5 Stars

Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing it deserves is forgiveness.

The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.

Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into heruntil she discovers that hes completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.

Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.

Poignant and powerful, Without Merit explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love and truth.



Merit.
She's 17 years old, somewhat lost and and a bit of an outsider in life and in her own family.
She has a twin sister, a brother who is only 10 months older and a four year old half-brother. She also has a used-car-salesman-dad and a mom and a step mom and a newly aquired 20 year old step-uncle. And they all live together in an fixed up old church.
Then she meets this one person. The one boy who could be her future. Something - someone just for her. But he's not hers. He was someone else's first. Or wasn't he?
But would he want her with all her problems? She might have to work on herself and her family for a bit before she can think about her happily ever after ....

WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MERiT & SAGAN???
WILL THERE BE A HAPPY END?
READ THE BOOK TO FIND OUT 


So adorable! I just loved it!
This was such a different and sweet and quirky and charming and angsty and dramatic and lovely small-town Texas young adult novel.
There were so many 'new' things in here - things I've never read about before - or at least not very often.
Just little things like the marquee or later the fence. The serious parts. So much more. Just amazing!
Merit is such a great character! So real and teenagy but also kind of the most grown-up person in that house!
And Sagan! He's an amazing guy. A bit mysterious, so sweet and kind and smart and talented.
And ugh - I just loved everything about this book.
Their house! The little brother. The dog. The patchwork family. The trophies. The drawings.
Of course not everything is adorable and cute. Merit is a typical teenager with all that comes with it... she needs some more time to find her place in life - and in her strange family. There are lots of secrets and problems in that house!
It won't be easy, but she's not alone!

♥ amazing book ♥


I also LOVED that Colleen used her own little home town as Merit's town. The fountain really exists! And Colleen's charity bookstore is being visited - it might even be possible that Merit and Sagan are real and she stole their story when she overheard them talking in the bookstore! ☺☺☺
Merit reminds me a lot of Colleen - the way she talks just like Colleen in her book reviews or anti-Tarryn posts! ☺

I loved everything about this book and I NEED for Netflix to come and grab it asap! I need to binge-watch that show!!!

WITHOUT MERIT was such an amazing coming-of-age-love-story-family-drama! Funny, heartbreaking, sweet & just ... so real!
Run to your nearest amazon asap for your very own Voss-Family-Saga!

(don't worry - we're not going into extreme detail about every single family member - Merit is the main character!)

Another PS - I'll put it in white - I don't want to spoil you - just run your finger or cursor across the following:
The end - I loved it. Like I said, I loved everything about the book. And I might have a tiny little spark of hope that we'll one day get to see a sequel. Maybe college-age Merit and Sagan or grown-up!
I would really love for that to happen!!!☺




ARC received for an honest review

"You bury me"

You never know what is behind that white picket fence, do you?

What could be the perfect family could be full of secrets and lies and who knows what else.

I was excited to receive an early copy of Without Merit - I mean, Colleen Hoover hasn't done me wrong yet.  And even though I am not one to read YA/teenage aged books (cos let's face it, I am an old fart and I am waaaaay past all that teen angst), I will always, and I mean always read CoHo's books.

Merit Voss' story is not all unicorns and cotton candy.  It is a little weird, a little dark, a little warped -and I loved every second of it.

Her family is all kinds of whacked.  I mean hoolie doolie, I don't want to give anything away but they are fifty shades of dysfunctional!!  

I went through the whole gamut of emotions as I read Without Merit.  Merit wormed her way into my heart right from the start, and I couldn't keep the emotions in.  I laughed, I cried, I yelled at my kindle and threw it across the room.  Ms Hoover just has that way with her writing, and even though I know she is going to rip my heart out and drag is through hell, I have to turn each page.

I don't want to spoil anything, as I feel that every CoHo book reader needs to go into a book a little bit blind.

Just be prepared for the unexpected.

I can't wait to see what she brings us next.

PS  I loved that her little charity bookstore makes an appearance!



 Links to the Book & Author 
  
  




In case you haven't read any of Colleen's books - try this one:






... or this one:





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I write because I need to. 
I review because I want to. 
I pay taxes because I have to. 

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