Lovin' los libros

Losing Hope (Hopeless #2)
   by: Colleen Hoover

Publication Date: July 8, 2013
Publisher: Atria Books
Genre: Contemporary
Age Group: Mature Young Adult
Source: e-ARC provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Page Count: 336 pages
Order Links: Amazon | B&N
My Rating: 5/5 stars

Just when you thought Colleen Hoover couldn't possibly shatter your heart any more than she already had....  She goes and writes a book from Dean Holder's POV. Normally, I would be worried because I have found I don't particularly care for retellings. However, after enjoying Hoover's This Girl, I knew I would give Losing Hope a try. I am so incredibly glad I did. Yes, it is a retelling of Hopeless, but it is so much more. If you hadn't told me it was a retelling, for the first part of the book I never would have known! We don't meet Sky until quite some time in- we are 100% with Dean, watching him suffer and deal with his sister, Les's suicide.

Oh, Holder. My heart absolutely ached for him. To be the one to find your twin sister has taken her own life? And to feel absolutely powerless because you couldn't have prevented it? Holder feels so many emotions over losing his sister. He feels guilt, anger, and overwhelming grief. Any time someone takes their own life, it always makes you wonder: were there signs? Did I miss something? Was I so involved in my own life that I didn't pay enough attention to theirs? Holder already feels he let down Hope, the little girl who was taken right in front of him at the age of 5- now he feels he let his sister down too. He finds a journal of hers that has never been written in and begins composing letters to Les. I love that Colleen included these. It is so personal and it serves as an outlet for Holder to really express his feelings and thoughts to her. You can really see just how much he misses her, how angry and hurt he is with her, and how at one point he doesn't even want to write to her anymore. What's the point? She's never coming back. However, the journal isn't blank. Holder finds something inside that will completely alter his world and I won't even lie- the tears just started flowing at that point. I. was. wrecked.

However, long before discovering that, Holder's life gets turned upside down when he runs into a girl at the grocery store who he swears is Hope. He is disappointed when he discovers it's not her, and your heart just hurts for him because this isn't the first time he thought he may have found her. The scene where we find out why Holder doesn't go by Dean anymore absolutely wrecked me. You can see just how badly he wants to find her and for him to feel the way he does at 8 years old when the scene took place is enough to kill you.

The girl at the grocery store turns out to be named Sky, and Holder forms a rather complicated relationship with her. She is in the dark about everything Holder has lost and she finds him to be intense, never getting a clear read on him. The way they meet, him chasing after her demanding to know her name, is enough to scare any normal person. He really does seem like a stalker, especially after running into her again later. Yet every intense feeling Holder gives off that Sky didn't understand, we now see. We understand why, after seeing her wearing that bracelet, he takes off- not speaking to her for weeks on end. When I first read Hopeless, I thought: this guy has got to be bi-polar!  He runs so hot and cold for his feelings for Sky and we realize he has a war raging within because he knows the truth.

I loved watching Holder and Sky together from his point of view. Watching him pinpoint the exact things he falls in love with about her was so incredibly sweet and beautiful and my heart seriously melted.

"I wonder if its possible for people to fall in love with a person one characteristic at a time, or if you fall for the entire person at once. Because I think I just fell in love with her wit. And her bluntness. And maybe even her mouth, but I won't allow myself to stare at it long enough to confirm." (e-ARC 107)

He is so patient with her and after she confesses that she feels numb to other guys' touch, he is determined to make her feel his. He won't kiss her like he wants to because he wants her to feel it as intensely and strongly as he knows he will with her.

After everything comes to a head and Sky discovers the truth and remembers her life before she was 'adopted', he is there to comfort her and even though they both just found out some seriously heavy stuff, he won't leave her side. He is pulled in so many different directions the night at the hotel in Austin- his head is at war with his heart and he is at an absolute loss of what to do for her. He is afraid of making things worse and he doesn't know if what he's doing is going to heal or hurt her in the long run. I will say this: Dean Holder is one of the best guys I have ever read about and I wish every girl in the world could have one for themselves.

"She lowers her mouth to mine and I drop my head back against the mattress and let her kiss me. "Keep them open," she whispers, pulling away from my lips. I do what she says and somehow open my eyes again, looking directly into hers. "I want you to keep them open... because I need you to watch me give you the very last piece of my heart." This moment. Right now. It's almost worth every ounce of pain I've ever had to endure."

... "And I let her keep her eyes closed, but I keep mine open and watch her steal the very last piece of my heart."

This book will shatter you, and even though it's called Losing Hope, and the title means more than what it implies, Hoover will end up giving you hope- hope for the future and hope that these two can overcome and survive the pain of the past. But most of all, she gives you hope for two young people who were torn from one another due to circumstances beyond their control, but found one another and bound back together by the greatest force of all: love.