This was a very different type of book for me. I thought it might have been a romance book which, it did have some but it was not what I thought. With that said....

Merit had my full attention from the beginning and I wanted to see what secrets she was hiding or knew about. Now her family, that is another subject there!

Yes we all have family drama and crazy relatives, we don't get to choose who we are related to, unfortunately. Well Merit was no exception. As I read about her dysfunctional family there were somethings that had me saying, "What the H@ll"!!! My family is crazy but dang! And her sister Honor-well.....

Like I said this was a very different type of book for me and though it wasn't my favorite it doesn't mean I'll stop reading her books. 3.5 Stars

Colleen Hoover sure knows how to take one twisted family and turn it into a beautiful, heart wrenching story! I've read a few of Colleen's books now, and I really wasn't sure what to expect going into this one, but it turned out to be just as amazing as the rest of her work!

Merit was a girl who was a bit misunderstood. She came across as brash and mean, but the more I learned about her and a few of her secrets, the better it was to understand her. It was easier for her to withdraw from her twisted family, so she could avoid all conflict. But seeing Merit getting to know her family again really opened her eyes, as well as mine, to see that there was more to her family than what she perceived.

I enjoyed seeing Merit with Sagan. He brought a spark back into her dull life. It was interesting to see him express himself through his drawings, which was one of Merit's favourite things about him. He also helped her see her family in a whole new light after her little incident.

The whole Voss family had it's quirks, and they didn't gel like a family should. They each had a secret of issue that kept them apart. When these secrets are in the open all hell breaks loose, as the family is then forced to deal with one another.

Hoover touched on a delicate issue that those who have it, don't realise they are suffering. There were some sad moments, but there were some moments that happened toward the end that had me laughing out loud. There were some awkward events and some tender scenes that had me swooning as well. Altogether, it was an incredible read, that touched my soul and I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come!

Complimentary copy provided by Simon & Schuster Australia, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Being a long-time reader of Colleen Hoover's work, the feeling I get when a new book is released is a double edged sword. On one hand, I'm excited -- it's a new CoHo to devour. On the other hand, you have to wonder (as a reader) if an author can ever really write a great book every time, or at some point are you going to come across one that is slightly lacking.

That was not the case with Without Merit.

One thing Colleen does extremely well is tackle difficult issues with grace. There is a lightness about her touch that allows the reader to experience these dark moments without having them become overwhelmed. She is an incredibly sensitive writer and I find this to make her work more credible than other books where they try to ram the issues down your throat.

Without Merit focuses on Merit, a teenager with a somewhat unique living arrangement, and we follow her as she navigates her way through a number of typical teenage obstacles (skipping school, falling in love, feelings of inadequacy). I won't spoil the book by detailing the intricacies of each of these, but safe to say that each is handled with Hoover's innate eloquence coupled with a rawness that legitimises each of the characters. She is the master of showing not telling, and it is this unapologetic approach to writing that makes her an instant one-click author for me.

I’ve only read one Colleen Hoover book before and it was years ago. I remember being underwhelmed but I’ve heard so much about how her writing and stories have improved and this sounded really interesting with quite a bit publisher push so I decided to give it a go.

Merit’s life is a bit of a mess. Her family is dysfunctional in the extreme – they live in an old converted church that her father purchased from his nemesis. Her mother (divorced from her father, agoraphobic) lives in the basement and never ventures out. The rest of the family – her father, his new wife, their young child together, Merit, her twin sister Honor and their brother Utah live upstairs. It’s not an ideal situation and it seems that there’s plenty of friction within the family.

For me, the biggest problem is that there’s just too much going on in this book. Merit is suffering from depression and anxiety (although is unaware/unwilling to examine it) and she spends a lot of time retreating into herself, skipping school and generally just avoiding as much as she can. Apart from that there’s also sexual assault, agoraphobia, hypochondria, other forms of mental illness, terminal illness and the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis. It makes it really hard to connect to any part of the story because it’s always skipping to something else and addressing the next issue. There’s so many that for me, none of them felt examined in depth or given the amount of page time that they deserve. I especially did not like the way in which the sexual assault was treated. This was something that had plagued the victim for years, had really affected them and when they finally decided to blow open the secret it seemed to take one conversation for everything to be resolved and forgiven and I didn’t think that was at all acceptable or realistic. The perpetrator may have been “confused” but they were by far old enough to know that what they were doing was wrong and predatory behaviour and just plain not okay. And the fact that it was ignored for so long by them was ridiculous. And the reaction of almost jealousy by someone who wasn’t preyed upon? Really? Just….no. Nope. And then there was the tangled mess of what was really happening between Merit’s parents and his new wife situation which was just a few too many twists and turns for me. Add in the new wife’s brother to stir the pot in a way that seems far too obvious and there were so many things that were just clunky and too heavily handled. It really lacked the finesse to gently air out these serious subjects and the emotions and tangled relationships involved here. Especially as it felt like it only took about 2-3 conversations to sort out most of these issues and a whole bunch of stuff could’ve been solved if the family had not kept so many weird secrets and tried to shove things under the rug.

I was excited about this because it had been talked up so much to me, but ultimately it just wasn’t my sort of read. I kept wanting more – so much of it just kept hinging on the fact that no one communicated and all these people were living these separate lives despite all being under the same roof. And there were a lot of people living under this roof. The only character I really probably liked was Sagan and half the time he felt too good to really be true and why on earth was he bothering with Merit and all this mess when she was so horrifically bad to him? Because she was. Absolutely awful. Part of it stems from a misunderstanding when they meet, where Sagan seems to believe that she is her twin. But it continues on for so long.

Ultimately this was disappointing and will probably be my last crack at a Colleen Hoover book, even though I still have one that I bought ages ago on my iBooks. I just don’t think her ways of telling a story are for me.

4/10

This book follows Merit, a girl with depression and anxiety but she doesn’t know she has it. She constantly stresses about the secrets and the lies from her quirky family who lives in a church, and takes the weight of everything on board her shoulders.

The start of the book definitely pulled me in, when a random guy kisses her and she finds out it’s her twin sisters boyfriend. That sparks a chain of events where she’s interested in him, but resents her sister for being with someone she is attracted to.

This isn’t the only relationship in her family that’s strained however, there’s a lot of quirky family history that has lead them to live in a church with her dads current and ex-wife under the same roof. It was fascinating finding out what the circumstances were one by one, and the secrets everyone kept from each other.

The family members were definitely a group of interesting people and it was interesting seeing what motivated them, from her mum who suffers from agoraphobia, to her OCD brother and twin sister who likes to date guys with terminal illnesses. Then there’s Luck who is the strangest character I’ve ever met in a book, he eats string, asks invasive questions, has a variety of accents due to working on a cruise ship and wears kilts, pink scrubs or whatever he feels like on the day. It’s not a surprise that Merit is struggling to come to terms with her family’s decision making but she seems to be the only one who openly has a problem with it.

While I did find Without Merit to be enjoyable, there were some completely cringeworthy scenes that had me rolling my eyes. In one scene, Merit dresses up like her twin sister and somehow ends up kissing Sagan, her boyfriend. Then there’s the whole attraction with him despite the fact. The manufactured scenes between them just felt really forced and I wasn’t satisfied with the explanation for the kiss at the start of the book. I also felt like he was a pretty bland character (which isn’t hard) in comparison to the rest of the family.

Without Merit sends an important message that “it’s all about perspective”. To you, you may see that things are terrible and that other people seem to be perfect, not suffering as much as you do. But there’s never a standard that you should hold yourself to, because there’s no such thing as perfect.

The other message is that even though others may be suffering in a different way, or over things that may seem worse than yours, your feelings are valid. Your stressors should not be compared to anyone else and that you are okay to feel that way. Recognising the signs when it gets too much is important for mental health.

Without Merit is a very different read to what I’ve come to expect from Colleen Hoover, but it definitely held an important message. The family is really fascinating as well as well Merits journey coming to terms with depression and that her mental health isn’t the best. I found this journey to be really realistic and haven’t read about depression in that sense before. However, some of the cheesier moments of the book had me rolling my eyes, in particular the romance and the perfect guy.

BIANCA

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

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!


JANEANE
"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!

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 ☺

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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 bookstory 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 about the family saga bit - we're not going into extreme detail about every single family member, and they're not getting their own POV - Merit is the main character!)

Another PS - I'll put it in a spoiler thingy!!!
[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 all grown-up! I would really love for that to happen!!!☺ (hide spoiler)]