Without Merit by Colleen Hoover

 

Without Merit

By Colleen Hoover

Reviewed by Jessica Colleran

In the last year author, Colleen Hoover, is exploding in popularity. Visit any bookstore and you will find entire displays dedicated to her books. She has everything from young-adult novels to heart-pounding thrillers like Verity (one of my absolute favorites). Like everyone else, I have saved the picture of all the covers of her books on my camera reel to make sure I can keep track of them all and cross them all off as I read them. I have yet to come across one of her books that I haven't enjoyed.  Without Merit may not have been my favorite book by Hoover, but it was still well worth the read and if you are a fan of Hoover's books, I'm sure you will enjoy it too!

Summary

The main character in this story is, Merit Voss. She has a twin sister, Honor, and an older brother, Utah. She also has a half-brother, Moby. I will admit, the odd names of all the characters in this book threw me for a loop! Merit is a senior in high school, but recently dropped out of school. Her family has no idea that she has been faking getting up and getting ready for school each day only to wait until they all leave the house and then return back to bed or to her room for the rest of the day. The Voss family lives in a small town in Texas where everyone knows everyone. The Voss family has a past less than to be desired, and rumors swirl around their unconventional family. Merit lives with all her siblings as well as her father, stepmother, and her mother. You heard right, Merit's father has a new wife, but his ex-wife is an agoraphobic who lives in the basement of the Voss home. The story revolves around Merit and her ever growing dislike for her family and her current situation. That is until a young man named Sagen enters her life and challenges everything she thinks to be true. 

What I Liked/Didn't Like

At first, I thought I wasn't going to like this story very much. As I grow older, I become less of a fan of young-adult novels. I think purely for the fact that the "problems" teenagers deal with seem so insignificant compared to the challenges you face as an adult. BUT, as the story progressed, I began to find common ground with the main character, Merit. As a warning to readers, this novel does touch on some sensitive subject matters such as depression and suicide. That being said, it wasn't to the point where the story was dark or unreadable. Hoover used these sensitive subjects to bring common ground between the reader and the characters which I really appreciated. As I said above, every character in this book had such a strange name that I had to stop and think about who each person was more than I would have liked throughout the book. The story took a bit to "liftoff" for me, but once I hit the halfway point, I really started to plow through this book to find out what happened. That says a lot about Hoover's talent as an author, in my opinion, to have a reader feel ambivalent about the story and then turn around their opinion halfway through the book. 

Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

At first, I thought that without a doubt that this was going to be a three-star book for me. About half-way through however, I quickly realized that this was a four-star worthy book. I found myself quickly flipping the pages to discover what the Voss family secrets were and to find out what happens between Merit and Sagen. While this was a young-adult novel, it felt "grown-up" in more ways than one, and the romance aspect was not mushy or dramatic as many young-adult novels tend to be. If you are a Colleen Hoover fan, or even if you have yet to read one of her books, Without Merit deserves to be added to your bookshelf!