So, what happens when I hit up a Books-A-Million on a Saturday? I score four books for less than $25 and spend the weekend engrossed in the first one and giddy to write my All Your Perfects book review. Colleen Hoover has, once again, monopolized my mental energy and left me unable to sleep (in the best way).
So, Colleen Hoover doesn’t need my humble book love, but I offer it anyway because… damn. This is my third Colleen Hoover book, and the third time the story has not only made me look at relationships differently but has also haunted me. Her story ghosts move right into my (limited) headspace, make themselves at home, and wreak their emotional havoc like loveable but hard-to-handle houseguests. They command attention and make me long for the time before…when my thoughts were safe and blissfully unaware of such terrible troubles. But I’m also keenly aware that I’m a better person with the ghosts than without. So… ghosts.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s Amazon’s All Your Perfects Book Blurb:
Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.
All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?
As far as book blurbs go, this one’s short and vague.
I’ll add that Quinn and Graham have an unconventional, intriguing start to their relationship that draws the reader in immediately—this is one thing of many that Colleen Hoover excels at. The big opener. They are charming and funny together—easy to love from the get-go. But their struggles with infertility and the emotional toll it takes on their marriage is raw, gritty, realistic, and heartbreaking. Quinn didn’t just pull at my heartstrings—her desperation and pain weighed me down like rocks in my gut (in the best way). She’s the first character in a long time who has genuinely affected me. I felt her pain. Felt her despair. And especially, I felt her anger.
I got into it so well on Saturday night that I read over 150 pages until a headache forced me to stop. But stopping after chapter sixteen proved a dumb mistake for sleep purposes. I laid in bed until the wee hours, stewing. So, if you read it… don’t let chapter sixteen be your break-point. Push through.
If you enjoy contemporary romance but would like more realism than what’s offered in most sweet, happily-ever-after stories, then… Colleen Hoover is your girl, and this book is as good as any to start.
That’s not to say she doesn’t pull off beautiful romance and satisfying endings—she definitely does. There’s heartfelt love and sweep-you-off-your-feet moments in the heartache. But it’s less head-in-the-clouds and more this-could-really-happen. And it’s better that way because it’s relatable.
I’ve been married for twenty-six years and loved the way I examined my own marriage through the All Your Perfects lens. Could we have survived that? And this part, when Quinn asks an old man about the secret to a perfect marriage, is especially honest:
“The old man leaned forward and looked at me very seriously. ‘Our marriage hasn’t been perfect. No marriage is perfect. There were times when she gave up on us. There were even more times when I gave up on us. The secret to our longevity is that we never gave up at the same time’.”
Though Joe and I haven’t faced the heartbreaking struggles Quinn and Graham did, I love how the story reveals a marriage’s sharp edges and how carefully and patiently one will help the other away from them.
Oh, and damn… wish we had thought to have a locked box with our wedding night love letters tucked away. That was so beautifully romantic. Ah…
I’ve also read and recommend Verity and It Ends With Us—each amazing in its own way. Though with Verity and being a writer myself, the plotline sometimes had me asking, “Really?”
Here are some writerly thoughts on my All Your Perfects book review.
To me, Colleen Hoover is the queen of two important things (besides bestselling books):
- Shock factor beginnings
- Compelling couple-stories that beg the question: Will they survive this?
In All Your Perfects, two people discover (and confront-ish) their cheating partners at the same time.
In It Ends With Us, a chance encounter on a rooftop leads to revealing naked truths.
And Verity… a terrible accident involving a bus and a stranger’s head on a city street oddly brings two people together.
Each makes the reader ask… will they survive this? Fill in the blanks with… infertility, domestic abuse, an existing marriage (and an unthinkable creative writing exercise!?!).
So, as a writer who wants best-selling books, reading Hoover challenges me in two crucial ways—where to start and how to keep the reader guessing.
One way to keep the intrigue is by utilizing a shifting perspective between past and present, which has been a featured technique in many books I’ve read lately. (Like Every Summer After by Carley Fortune). By chapter two, we know that Quinn’s married to Graham and it’s falling apart. They’re doing a “divorce dance,” as she calls it. From there, we’re intrigued—how did they fall in love, and why are they crumbling now?
Knowing where to begin your story is also key in making sure a reader cares about it. A great inciting incident will lock your reader in, and that can happen via the past, present, or future.
So, these are definitely points to take into consideration when penning any hopeful bestseller.
After putting down All Your Perfects, I turned to Joe and said, “I need a book chaser—something light and airy to rid me of the ghosts.” But they still haunt me.
In the best way.
For more on books, writing, and my books, check out my website. My first contemporary romance, One Thing Better, is available for preorder and open for ARC reviews. And check out my other reviews, like Every Summer After by Carley Fortune and The Night of Many Endings by Melissa Payne.
