companion book – Z. Elizabeth

Synopsis

In the follow-up to Colleen Hoover’s #1 New York Times bestseller Hopeless, the charming and irresistible Dean Holder tells the passionate story that has melted thousands of hearts.

In Hopeless, Sky left no secret unearthed, no feeling unshared, and no memory forgotten, but Holder’s past remained a mystery.

Still haunted by the little girl he let walk away, Holder has spent his entire life searching for her in an attempt to finally rid himself of the crushing guilt he has felt for years. But he could not have anticipated that the moment they reconnect, even greater remorse would overwhelm him…

Sometimes in life, if we wish to move forward, we must first dig deep into our past and make amends. In Losing Hope, bestselling author Colleen Hoover reveals what was going on inside Holder’s head during all those hopeless moments—and whether he can gain the peace he desperately needs.

5 /5 Stars

My review of HOPELESS

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My Review

If you’ve read my Hopeless review, you will know how much I adored that book. Like seriously? It’s on my favourites list and Holder is definitely a book boyfriend. When Colleen said she was writing a book in Holders POV and his story, well that book was going on my TBR list asap. Hopeless is pure amazing and I knew Losing Hope would be too.

I was not disappointed at all. Thank to NetGalley, I downloaded my copy and in two days, Losing Hope was read. It was devoured. I was sucked in and entranced by every word, every page and every feeling and thought Holder was telling us.

The fact that Losing Hope is NOT a retell of Hopeless…well I just love it. Yes there are certain scenes that are told in Holder’s POV but this is HIS story. His story from losing his sister, to finding Sky to finding Hope along the way. HIS story of how he began to live, how he fell in love, how he learnt to forgive and breathe again.

I had seen tweets that Losing Hope was more emotional than Hopeless and they were not wrong. A few pages in and I had to hold back the tears as I was in public. I ugly cried throughout the book, I felt every single emotion from Holder; I wanted to climb into my kindle and hug the shit out of him. I wanted to be there for him, be Sky and let him fall in love with me. Help him through everything he was going through.

If you have yet to fall in love with Holder in Hopeless, by god, you will completely and madly and totally in love with him in Losing Hope. He literally has my heart now. (I say this a lot. But it’s fine. It’s not cheating if they are from different books.) Daniel, Holder’s best friend also has a piece of my heart. He is utterly brilliant!

Colleen has written an AMAZING book in Losing Hope. She has you sucked in from the first page, she has you laughing, crying – ugly crying that is -, wanting to know everything about Holder. You feel. You feel everything in the book. There is no getting out of it and you won’t want to either because you will cherish all these feels.

We knew Holder was intense in Hopeless, but hes really intense in Losing Hope. But you can kind of understand why. I loved that you could see the story through Holder’s eyes. Experience his story and his feelings when that certain event happened. If you thought you knew Holder in Hopeless, you are mistaken. You won’t truly know him until you read Losing Hope.

Holder will completely surprise you. He did with me and there are certain scenes where I felt for him. My heart ached for him and although I understood why he did it, I wanted him to forgive himself, let himself love and this is why he and Sky were so perfect together. They were right together because they balanced each other out. They knew what they other needed without exchanging words. They knew each other well enough to know what the other was feelings.

“I live you Sky…I live you so much”

Just the littlest things they did meant so much to one another and I love this kind of love. It’s the purest form and they both definitely love one another so much that they can’t live without each other.

Holder is angry, hes confused, hes scared and he can’t forgive himself for losing both his girls but you watch him slowly fall in love, slowly learn to forgive himself and his sister, learn that he can breathe again and that Sky is the end game for him. She’s everything to him and he can’t and will never lose her again. It would kill him.

We see him relationship with his sister, Les, with his mum and of course Sky. We see different sides to him, sides you will fall in love with, sides you will want to smack his head but you will understand why, why he acted that way, why he did that certain thing. And in the end you will sob your heart out, be madly in love with Holder and love the journey he has been through in the last 13 months, see how far hes come, especially with Sky.

NOW to Daniel, Holder’s best friend. I cannot tell you how hilarious this dude is. The first time he is mentioned, I wanted to kiss him because the things he says are just so freaking funny. He is an awesome best friend to Holder, protecting him and sticking up for him, even wanting to get into fights for him. You know he will always have your back. The banter between him and Holder had me in stitches and you can really see the bromance between the two. It was lush to see that Holder had someone who cared for him and would do anything for him.

The ending was perfect. You see the closure that Sky and of course Holder needed. The closure to breathe again, to learn to love and forgive and let go of the grief that was held up inside of him. You see he and Sky come along way, a life where they are both in love with each other, a life where they are the end game and are happy together – happy to have finally found each other again.

Although it would be totally lush to have a book beyond Hopeless and losing Hope, I love the fact that it ended like that. Where Holder learnt to forgive and he and Sky are off to start the rest of their lives together. The way it should be.

If you have get to read Hopeless, please do get it. It is easily one of my favourites and I cannot recommend it enough. You will love Sky and Holder. Then go and buy Losing Hope and fall even more in love with Holder and his story this time. There are a lot of surprises and twists in losing Hope that aren’t in Hopeless and you will feel every emotion, and cry your eyes out. Remember what I said….if a book makes you cry, it’s a bloody, damn great one!

Synopsis

Matt is a junior at MIT. He’s geeky, he’s witty, he’s brilliant.

And he’s also very, very stupid.

When beautiful, cool, insightful Julie moves in with Matt’s family, why (oh why!) does he pretend to be his absent brother Finn for her alleged benefit?

It seems harmless enough until her short-term stay becomes permanent. And until it snowballs into heart-squeezing insanity. And until he falls in love with Julie, and Julie falls in love with Finn.

But … Matt is the right one for her. If only he can make Julie see it. Without telling her the truth, without shattering them all. Particularly his fragile sister Celeste, who may need Julie the most.

You saw Matt through Julie’s eyes in FLAT-OUT LOVE. Now go deeper into Matt’s world in this FLAT-OUT MATT novella. Live his side of the story, break when his heart breaks, and fall for the unlikely hero all over again.

Take an emotional skydive for two prequel chapters and seven Flat-Out Love chapters retold from his perspective, and then land with a brand-new steamy finale chapter from Julie.

4.5/5 stars

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My Review

For those of you who have yet to read Flat-Out Love, then I’d advise you go and download that right now, read it then download Flat-Out Matt and read that straight after.

Flat-Out Matt is a companion novella to Flat-Out Love. It contains the ‘best’ scenes where us readers and lovers of FOL wanted to see Matt’s thoughts and feelings throughout that particular scene. All the scenes that were included in this novella were all the scenes that I absolutely adored and wanted to read in Matt’s POV. Every chapter I was wondering which scene would be next and I was not disappointed in the ones that Ms. Park used and wrote.

As mentioned in the synopsis, there is a prequel at the start which starts with Finn and Matt hiking and talking about life and their family. I loved reading this side of both of them, especially Matt, who, in Flat-Out Love really had to grew up fast and look after Celeste and do everything around the house as well as attend classes. It seemed that hiking made him free, if only for a moment.

Even though you know what happens in FOL and the story that both these books take, it’s still great to see Matt’s point of view throughout everything that happened. From him starting what he did and why he justified it, to watching him panic over how out of hand its gotten and to how he was feeling along the way – his emotions changing with every scene. You knew what was going to happen, but when you read it in Matt’s POV, it was still heartbreaking to read because everything he did, he did it for Julie and his family, even though he was the one who didn’t want to keep her in the dark with the secret yet that is exactly what he was doing.

But we all fell in love with Matt in FOL and you will definitely love him even more now in FOM because we get it all from his point of view, apart from the last one which is Julie’s.

You can still feel how broken the family are, and Julie, but with her presence, the characters are breaking out from their old shells, into new ones. They are still as loveable and hilarious and even though there are scenes that are not next to each other when reading FOL, in FOM they all blend together brilliantly and the timeline isn’t off at all!

The last scene is steamy. Jessica Park was not lying when she said that, and it was just great to read beyond the last page of FOL and into the added scenes in FOM with Matt and Julie being together and being in love. It was the perfect ending to a fantastic book and I loved knowing that Matt and Julie are totally happy and in love with one another after everything that has happened in their lives.

You all need to read this novella. It’s not a long one, but it packs a hell of a lot in it that you will fly by reading it and come out at the end all deliriously happy that everything turns out super amazing and sexy for Matt and Julie. (And of course, happy for Celeste too! I love that girl.)