As someone who loves to read in my free time, my Christmas list was full of books that I wanted to read. The first book I picked up after Christmas was Hopeless by Colleen Hoover. To explain the book, this article will contain spoilers, so if you are interested in reading Hopeless I suggest you stop reading after the second paragraph. After reading this book it became one of my favorites so quickly. The plot was so intriguing that it kept me wanting to read even when I had other things I needed to do. 

The story starts off with Sky meeting a boy named Dean Holder when she is going on a run around her neighborhood. Sky does not get much social interaction because she is homeschooled, and her mother does not own a television or cell phones. Sky only has one main friend who lives right next door, but she is perfectly fine with her life. However, she wants to try out public school for the first time to make some more friends. Now once she went to high school, she learned that Dean Holder, who she had now been running with in the mornings, is actually a guy with a pretty bad reputation. She tries to stay away from him, but eventually a bond is formed between them to where they want to talk and be friends. 

The two start dating, which leads Sky to want to know more about his past and where he grew up. Sky asks Dean many questions, however he won’t give her the answers she is wanting. This upsets Sky to make her think that Dean is lying to her, but he really is just trying to protect her from shattering her life into a whole new situation that she does not know about. Dean when he first met Sky, knew she looked so familiar, he even asked to see her drivers license. 

Turns out that Dean did know Sky like he thought he did. When Dean was younger, like five or six years old, he was outside in his yard playing. His next door neighbor Hope was playing in her yard as well. When a car pulled up she was taken in the car and drove off with. However, Dean being so young didn’t know what was happening and went on to play in his yard. Hope had been kidnapped, and taken somewhere which no one ever saw. Back to the present day, Sky went over to Dean’s house and she was just looking around. When she went into a room in his house, she was in Dean’s sisters room, who committed suicide a couple years prior, she saw many pieces of jewelry, pictures, and furniture that made her memories come back to her mind. 

Without spoiling the whole book, Hope was kidnapped, due to the way her father treated her, by her aunt who changed her name to Sky. Her aunt got rid of all television, social media, and cellphones to protect herself and Sky. Sky is upset with both her aunt and Dean for not telling her, but she eventually forgives them and realizes that Dean was still unsure how to tell her because it would change her whole life. She realizes her Aunt was just trying to help her in the long run as well.

This book was so sad, exciting, and happy at the same time. I couldn’t stop reading this book for a second. I finished the book in a little over a day because it kept me so interested the entire time. If you need a good read for your next book, I would recommend Hopeless. The author makes a theme of forgiveness to teach the reader that forgiveness is a good thing for certain situations.