All Your Perfects: A Novel (Hopeless) Paperback – July 17, 2018

All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover5 stars!!!“…it’s hard to admit that a marriage might be over when the love is still there.”This is a review that I needed to write as soon as I finished the book. Normally I like to sleep on it, let my thoughts and opinions roll around my head to come up with something interesting and relevant to say. However, no matter how much thinking I do, nothing, and I mean nothing, will ever come close to representing what I just read. Nothing I could say could do this book justice, it was just one of those books that touched me on such a deep, emotional level, that I cried and I mean I CRIED. I have not cried this much over a book EVER and that is saying something. But this book, THIS BOOK, just drained me of EVERY. SINGLE. EMOTION. The message was something I could relate to, but my ending was magical, and while this couple had their own different magical ending, the road to get there just grabbed at my heart and soul and never let go, it still hasn’t.“When you meet someone who is good for you, they won’t fill you with insecurities by focusing on your flaws. They’ll fill you with inspiration, because they’ll focus on all the best parts of you.”Colleen hoover delivers an unforgettable read and I mean UNFORGETTABLE. This will be one of those rare books that I put on my ALL-TIME list, a book that I will re-read time and time again. From the minute I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down, captivating, hypnotic, poignant, intense, brutally honest, raw, emotional, heart wrenching and yet one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Beautiful, how so? Because this book is about true love. A love so intense, so finite and that soul mate connection we all want to find. A love that can stand the test of a category 6 and while their belief may get muddied, may be stretched to breaking point, maybe to the point of no return, that intrinsic love for one and other is what ultimately reigns supreme. A love so deeply embedded for one and other that no matter the crisis, no matter the crappy hand that you’ve been dealt, that LOVE is a permanent foundation, no wrecking ball has the power to destroy it and while it gives a good attempt at it, it doesn’t succeed.“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.”Graham and Quinn’s beginning is unconventional and yet while when they first meet may not have been their day, when their paths do cross again fate has definitely worked its magic. I adored Graham in this book, his personality shone through the pages, like this bright beacon of happy, hope and everything good in the world. His love for Quinn was ever present, he loves fiercely, he wore his heart on his sleeve and it just radiated off every single page, and yet the more the story progressed the more that light dimmed, but most importantly, it never went out. Graham wasn’t perfect, maybe for ninety-nine percent of the time he was, but when you are losing the one thing you love the most, desperate times call for desperate measures. He got a ten for the thought behind it, but a zero in execution.“I love you more in this moment than any moment that has come before it.”Quinn was in self-destruct mode in this book and it is one place that I could totally relate to. But this is where Colleen Hoover excelled, her portrayal of a woman in this position was honest, it was gritty, it was raw, it was warts and all. The gradual breakdown of Quinn and Graham’s marriage was a reaction to circumstance. A couple whose relationship was built on honesty and talking to one and other to one where they never talked at all. Those bottling up of emotions, thoughts and feelings that just multiply and multiply in your mind, until something relatively little, becomes a huge, huge problem. Where a couple that know what the other is thinking on a normal day, lose that ability and jump to all the wrong conclusions, they read the signs all wrong and the more they think, the more the problems manifest, the more they grow until the love is slowly pushed to the bottom and the problems just cascade over the top.“Who are you right now? What did you do with my husband?”“He’s probably somewhere with my wife. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her.”Colleen Hoover is one master story-teller, the myriad of emotions she effortlessly puts you through while capturing a test in life that many couples face was nothing short of amazing. A test that many couples battle and one you will never truly understand until you find yourself in the same situation. But Colleen Hoover goes out of her way to make you live it and she certainly succeeds. For a marriage to survive it is true what this author says, “if you only shine light on your flaws, all your perfects will dim,” and it is those perfects that you need to concentrate on. Remember the best times, the hard times are there to test us, speed bumps on the road trip of your life, but where you end up is the most important, don’t let those speed bumps derail you. Be happy, everyone deserves to be happy, and while sometimes you have to change your perception of happy, make a new one. Life is what you make it. Focus on all your perfects. What an unforgettable book!

I always struggle with writing reviews for Colleen Hoover's novels, I don't feel that I have the ability to explain with words how her novels make me feel. Every book of hers makes me think, leaving a lasting impression with a story I can recall years after reading. All Your Perfects was such a heavy read for me, one that, despite the tears, I loved so much and I think it might leave the most lasting impression out of all of them. It's an adult romance, featuring characters who are married that have weathered many storms together. Quinn and Graham have the kind of love you read about in fairytales, it's beautiful and lasting, but their marriage is real and marred by imperfections. Those imperfections eat at them and in time the strength of their love is not enough to carry them, in All Your Perfects Quinn and Graham reflect on the love they once had and the love they share today.“You say that like marriage is a Category 5 hurricane.” “Not all the time. But I definitely think there are Category 5 moments in every marriage.”Quinn and Graham have an unconventional meet-cute story, but it's the first drop of water on their blossoming romance. They've been together seven years, they know each other better than they know themselves, and yet they're still struggling to keep their marriage afloat. Told in alternating timelines, Then and Now, All Your Perfects follows along with the two as they fall in love and fight for that love. The Then chapters give us so much background into who the two are as individuals, who they were in those first blissful days of dating and falling in love, but mixed in with those sweet chapters are difficult ones. We also see them as secrets pile, as regret and sorrow and hopelessness take over their home. Colleen Hoover tells a story about love, about marriage, about the strenuous times that we oftentimes cover up with shiny paper and a bright bow. What Quinn and Graham have is beautiful and strong, but we all know that love can't carry a relationship alone."I promise to love you more when you hate me than when you love me."The difficulties Quinn and Graham face as a couple, as individuals, are real and painful. The chapters where they struggled, where the truth and the hurt bubbled out of them, were so challenging to read that I needed the Then chapters to break up the heavy. For me, it just might be the most relatable book I've ever read. I could put myself in their shoes and many times I connected parts of the story to my own. I also found it to be uplifting, though I admit I cried roughly the last 20% of the novel. There's wisdom in the pages, the secret to their love is inspiring, the way they work so hard to overcome the hard is a testament to their faith in one another, and there's a lot of power in the words that Colleen Hoover so carefully crafted."People can’t always control who their circumstances turn them into."All Your Perfects is an emotional tale about love, the kind of love you promise to another forever despite the Category 5s you may have to through. I loved the impassioned fight the two gave to save their love and I was so moved by the way they shared. Quinn and Graham are like real people for me now and as I read All Your Perfects my heart ached for them and hoped for them and wanted perfect for them. Of course, like all of Colleen Hoover's book titles, this one has a background and the message about perfect was such a good one. I can't make anyone read this book, but I recommend it one hundred percent. There's magic in these pages, life changing, beautiful magic.