I think I made my thoughts pretty clear in my review of This Girl – I don’t enjoy books that rehash the same story from a different perspective.

To be fair, though, with Les’ suicide before Sky comes into the picture, Holder actually does have some depth to contribute to the original story. I know his perspective wasn’t included in Hopeless to preserve the ‘surprise’ element, but a good author would have been able to combine these two books into one.

In the first book, Sky’s perspective is about this ‘intense, passionate‘ (the words used to dismiss the red flags of his abusive tendencies) guy, while in this one, Holder is constantly questioning everything: is it Hope, could it be her, what if it’s her, what do I tell her and when? Then the ‘surprise’ in both of them is the abusive father that Sky is repressing and that Holder didn’t know about.

I’m no book editor, but c’mon – tell me you wouldn’t have preferred one book with this combined narrative weaving depth and complexity rather than two shallow books we have to put together – wasted opportunity.