This book captured a piece of my soul. It’s about first love and broken heart bones and family and fathers. It’s about this intense time in life when we make decisions that determine the trajectory of our adult lives while feeling emotions rush over us more powerfully than we ever have or ever will, like a tidal wave washing over us unexpectedly. It’s about so many things, but my favorite part is that it’s a love letter to the ocean and sunrises on the beach, the place where the salt and sand and wind refill our weary souls.

“Seeing the ocean in person is almost as important as having food and shelter. It doesn’t seem farfetched to believe a charity should exist for the sole purpose of allowing people to afford a trip to the beach. It should be a basic human right. A necessity. It’s like years of therapy, rolled up into a view” (41). ( )

289

Strengthen Your Heart Bone

Stunning. Seriously, just a really beautiful, powerful romance. I had no idea what to expect going into this - and that’s how I’d recommend everyone go into it - so the story unraveled in such an organic, mesmerizing way. From page one, you can tell that there’s an intensity about the book that sets it apart from the rest; a heaviness that gives this love story such WEIGHT. And it truly is a love story. Our heroine goes on her own journey throughout the course of the book, but through it all, there’s that one guy who makes an impact. It’s one of the best books I’ve read all year, hands down, and the kind of story that you’ll want to reread with fresh eyes as soon as you turn the last page. I can say for sure that this has made my favorites box this year. I just finished Layla by the same author and that was such a different experience.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about the plot on this one, because I think you should discover it as you read. There’s an incredible build in intimacy, a slow burn romance with depth, and a mysterious quality to both our hero and the story as a whole. The book kicks off on a somber note and does have a heavy feel to much of it, but there is also so much wonder and that feeling you only get with young love. It’s new adult romance with a 19-year-old heroine who is just starting to really live. She comes from a troubled background, with many, many triggers in her history, and they appear right away. I think that the triggers are needed to show depth of character and makes me love Beyah even more. As for Samson I felt him to be so genuine and so broken that you couldn’t help but love them as a couple.

My favorite part about the book? It is so engaging yet makes you really think about love, yourself and the world around you and how people make the best of the life they are given. Told exclusively from the heroine’s perspective, there are little breadcrumbs along the way that tell us more about the hero. These two seem so different on the surface, but the more they wade into the depths, the more commonalities they discover. At one point, I was so convinced that I knew where the story was heading... but I was completely wrong. And I love that. It kept me engrossed from start to finish, and I ended up devouring it in one sitting. Even though my review is days after I read it. That doesn’t take away from how much I enjoyed it.
( )

Heart Bones by Colleen Hoover

Beyah and Sampson face (horrible) scars from thier past. They are an unlikly pair, different yet the same. An emotional story of loss, family, love.

Heart Bones may be one of the most emotional books I have read by Colleen Hoover , yet. A must read for those who love a great love story. ( )

Beyah has grown up in poverty and seen her fair share of tough times, living with her mother in Kentucky. After high school graduation, circumstances force her to seek out her father, who has recently remarried and is spending the summer in his Texas beach house. In the span of 24 hours, as Beyah's life is upended, she finds herself getting reacquainted with the father she barely knows, a new stepsister, and a somewhat mysterious, handsome young man named Samson who is living in the beach house next door. Though they seem to have nothing in common, Beyah and Samson are drawn to one another, until something unforeseen tears them apart.

I feel like I'm kind of jumping on the bandwagon with another CoHo book. Romance, per se, is not necessarily my reading go-to, but....everybody can use a little romance now and then, right? And I will admit: I liked this one. I didn't feel like it was overly cheesy, I liked the young adult falling-in-love for the first time feelings it provoked, and while some of it was a little predictable, other parts were not. I liked these characters. They were likeable, yet flawed. My only complaint was that the ending was a little *too* neat and tidy for my liking, but otherwise, an enjoyable read. ( )