Full review posted at GingerRead ReviewsWhen starting Hopeless, I was not aware of the subject matter contained in it. Thankfully, because I had just finished reading a The Voice which deals with the abduction and rape of a teenage girl and I don't think I would have jumped right into Hopeless knowing what I was getting myself into.Because I did not know where I was being led, Hopeless started off as more of a light-hearted read. We meet Sky when she is about to begin her Senior year, her first at a public school. Sky has spent the last thirteen years being homeschooled by her adopted mother, Karen. Her best friend lives only feet away from her but is leaving to study abroad in a matter of days. Sky knows her sheltered life is about to change in big ways but no one could expect it to completely shatter the way it does.Sky has spent her teenage years making out with boy after boy in an attempt to feel something. Anything. She doesn't get the spark other girls get, there is no love, no lust, no want, no butterflies. She knows she is getting a reputation, she knows it's stupid but the comfortably numb feeling she gets when with a boy she has no desire for is all she knows to do. "Hopefully intelligence is measured by weight, and the few dumb decisions I've made will be outweighed by the intelligent ones. If that's the case, I'll need to make a shitload of smart decisions tomorrow."All that changes when she meets Dean Holder. All the feelings she has spent a lifetime wondering about, seep into her and the confident girl she's been for so long hides in a corner of her heart while the insecure and flustered one takes the lead. Holder is intense, to put it mildly, he worms into every piece of Sky and there is no turning away from the odd connection they have at first sight. "This is lust? I hate it. I absolutely, positively hate this beautiful, magical feeling." The relationship building between Sky and Holder was so adorable. If I had a son I would force him to read this book just to learn how a guy should talk to a girl. Holder says the most amazing things, he's obviously a book boy written by a woman because I don't think guys like this really exist. If they do, there are woman lined up at their door around the clock just to get a little snippet of a swoon worthy line (among other things). I kind of want to make my husband read it, but he truly is hopeless so I'll save my breath there. "You can hold my hand, you can run your fingers through my hair, you can straddle me while I feed you spaghetti, but you are not getting kissed tonight. And probably not tomorrow, either. I need this. I need to know for sure that you're feeling every single thing that I'm feeling the moment my lips touch yours. Because I want your first kiss to be the best first kiss in the history of first kisses."See what I mean? Sky is great though too. She's honest and funny and doesn't let the silly things in life get her down. She's awkward about a lot of things most take for granted, due to her sheltered upbringing but it only served to make her more adorable and endearing.But that is just the first half of the book. The second half of Hopeless is much darker, deeper, scarier and absolutely heartbreaking. I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty, if you don't already have an idea of what Hopeless is about then hopefully you'll get the same experience I had while reading it. I went from smiling sentence after sentence at the blooming relationship between two great characters to continuously having to pause to catch the breath I didn't realize I was holding. Not long pauses, mind you, this was a book that had me up in to the wee hours of the morning. I could not put this remarkable journey down.This was my first Hoover read but I own Slammed and am even more anxious to get to it. Hoover's writing was exactly the style I love; she delivered wonderful, beautifully damaged characters in hard situations and laces it with just enough humor to keep it from turning into a depressing black hole. Losing Hope (Hopeless #2), which is told from Holder's point of view, is due out in July and it is going to be an excruciatingly long wait.
