Layla Review

Ebook, 301 Pages
Adult/ Paranormal Romance
By: Colleen Hoover
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2

“It’s better to be a selfless somebody than to be a selfish nobody.”

It has been a while since I read one of CoHo’s books. It Ends with Us remains one of my favorite romance novels up to this day because it was just so meaningful and different. I realized I have never done a buddy read with my friend Leslie who has the closest book taste to my taste and we have both not read a CoHo’s book in a while so we decided to kick in our first BR with this book and not surprisingly we ended up agreeing on each and every thing!

This is Coho’s first venture into the paranormal genre and I am not a fan of the genre to be honest but it sounded intriguing and Hoover is an experienced reader so I wanted to see what she has in store. I think for a debut in the genre she did pretty well but I do prefer her normal romances! I don’t think I can say much without spoiling it so just read the synopsis if you wanna know what is it about.

The thing is that the writing was very good technical wise due to Hoover’s experience and it was very intriguing and gripping, both Leslie and I finished in within one day which says something about the book. What we did not like is that some things did not click for us like the romance whether it is the normal or the paranormal one and how one of the characters was treated. I think mental illnesses are very stigmatized and this book does not do much to help the cause. Psychiatric patients are looked down upon in the society and in the story which may be realistic but is not cool!

“It’s been proven that people who read live longer. Are you trying to die young?”

The second thing we did not like is that this book depended on drama and the surprise factor which sometimes was cringy and did not work. I also think we found a plot hole in the story with all the twists going around specially toward the end!

Summary: I believe it was not a bad book and Hoover kind of achieved what she was going for with this one. It is well written and hard to put down but I think some of the details regarding the plot and characters could have been more empathetic. I was not very surprised by the twists because I know how Hoover writes specially after reading her book Verity. Overall, I still found it better than most of my 3 stars so I added an extra half star!