I really, really liked this book. I’m going to say it loud and proud – I am a full-on Colleen Hoover fan. I remember reading Slammed – her first novel – back in 2012 and I remember really liking it, but I don’t remember a whole lot about it, so I’ll most likely be revisiting it. Over the last three months I’ve read 5 of her books, and spoiler alert, I will be chatting about a couple of them next episode, so if you too are a CoHo fan, be sure to tune in.

What I love about her books (at least the ones that I’ve read so far) is that they aren’t all unicorn farts and sunshine. She puts her characters through some real life shit, and I love it. I’m not much for rom-com books (though I have read a few that I enjoyed – I just have to be in the right mindset for them). I want to feel something. I want the characters to have to earn whatever it is they’re getting and thus far, she has made hers do just that. Sometimes I want to slap them for being stupid, but I often understand the why behind their actions even if I don’t fully agree with them.

This book is about Beyah Grim – a recent high school graduate from a small Kentucky town who aches to get out of this crap town. Her mother is an addict, and Beyah has pretty much been on her own her entire life. She’s visited her birth father a few times in her life, but for the most part it’s been her and her mother (at least when her mother was around). Beyah took up volleyball hen she was younger and found she was pretty good at it, so she worked hard and managed to get a full ride scholarship at a school in Pennsylvania. She counts down the days until she can leave, but her life is upended when she comes home from work and finds her mother dead from an overdose.

This is where the book starts – with Beyah walking in and finding her mother dead. She stands and stares at her mother’s body and reflects on the shit life she’s lead up to this point because of her mother. One quote that really struck me was: “Most kids get the kind of parents who’ll be missed after they die. The rest of us get the kind of parents who make better parents after they’re dead. The nicest thing my mother has ever done for me is die.”

Beyah knows she can’t stay in Kentucky, but she has three months before college starts, so her only other option is going to stay with her dad. She and her dad aren’t super close, and she resents him a bit. She assumes she’ll be living in Seattle (which is where he lived the last time she’d visited him), but when she calls him she finds out that he has married a dentist from Houston. They have a summer house on Boliver Peninsula near Galveston, and Beyah is off to live with her estranged father, his new wife Alana and Alana’s daughter Sara.

It’s on the ferry to the peninsula that Beyah first runs into Samson. He snaps a picture of her and offers her $20 when he sees her eating a slice of bread from a loaf that she found on the ferry. For reasons you’ll learn if you read the book, Beyah is very offended by this gesture and it leads to a not-so-sweet interaction with Samson.

Later, after meeting Sara we learn that Sara’s boyfriend is close friends with Samson. Sara decides she wants to hook the two of them up, which Beyah has no interest in at first, but the more time she spends with Samson and the more she gets to know him, she realizes he is much more than the perceived spoiled rich guy she thought he was. Samson is super helpful to many people on the peninsula – especially an elderly widow named Marjorie, and obviously harboring some secrets of his own. The two of them realize they’re getting in too deep, so they both agree that when August rolls around – whatever is happening between them will be done. No strings attached. Beyah will go to Pennsylvania for college and Samson will leave for the military.

But as the days pass and Beyah learns more about Samson, she realizes leaving him is not going to be easy, but just when she thinks she has him figured out the truth about who Samson really is is revealed and it changes the course of both their lives.

I loved the complexity of both of the characters. I loved that Sara and Beyah developed a really sweet friendship. There was no “wicked stepsister/mean girl” bullshit and it was so refreshing to see how their friendship developed, and how they both helped each other with their insecurities.

The book was both hopeful and heartbreaking. For some reason, whenever I hear the song “exile” by Bon Iver and Taylor Swift it makes me think of this book.

I would highly recommend this one if you like a good contemporary romance – especially if you prefer them to be something other than sticky sweet.