Regretting You
By: Colleen Hoover
Publication: December 10th 2019 by Montlake Romance
365 pages
Genre: Contemporary, Adult, Young Adult
Source: Personal Kindle Library (Christmas gift)
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Goodreads description--From #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us comes a poignant novel about family, first love, grief, and betrayal that will touch the hearts of both mothers and daughters.Morgan Grant and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Clara, would like nothing more than to be nothing alike.
Morgan is determined to prevent her daughter from making the same mistakes she did. By getting pregnant and married way too young, Morgan put her own dreams on hold. Clara doesn’t want to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Her predictable mother doesn’t have a spontaneous bone in her body.
With warring personalities and conflicting goals, Morgan and Clara find it increasingly difficult to coexist. The only person who can bring peace to the household is Chris—Morgan’s husband, Clara’s father, and the family anchor. But that peace is shattered when Chris is involved in a tragic and questionable accident. The heartbreaking and long-lasting consequences will reach far beyond just Morgan and Clara.
While struggling to rebuild everything that crashed around them, Morgan finds comfort in the last person she expects to, and Clara turns to the one boy she’s been forbidden to see. With each passing day, new secrets, resentment, and misunderstandings make mother and daughter fall further apart. So far apart, it might be impossible for them to ever fall back together.
Regretting You is proof that even favorite authors might go into your no-fly-reading zones. And even though I read Regretting You and can say that I enjoyed it, I wish I had known more about the subject matter upfront. That being said I feel like I need to warm others who might feel the same way that I do about the subject matter. So.... highlight for spoilers: Regretting You spends the majority of the book dealing with the after-effects of an affair. Cheating is something that has touched my family in the past and I don't enjoy reading books about this subject matter as it tends to force me to relive emotions that I'd rather leave in the past. So I wish I'd known upfront that Regretting You focused so heavily on this as I might have chosen not to read this book at all. End spoiler. That being said, I did read this and it was the parts involving Miller that saved it for me.
Morgan's side of the story hit me hard. Since becoming a mother I connect with the mothers in the stories just as much and as often as the main characters. I can't help but filter their experiences against how I think I would feel if facing the same issues or experiences. Especially watching my children experience various life events. Her story broke my heart. Yet she did such a great job of pressing on and doing the best she could. Of course, a lot of pain and drama could have been avoided with some honest communication, but that doesn't always make for an interesting story.
Clara...I went back and forth with my feelings. On the one hand, she's coping as best as she can with the information she has. Yet, she so frequently purposefully set out to hurt her mother. It broke my heart to watch. Thank goodness she finally figured things out for herself because goodness knows Morgan wasn't going to be honest with her. Yet I really enjoyed the parts of her story involving Miller...even when she didn't always treat him the way she should. It felt real even though it wasn't always pretty.
Other than the initial twist, there was nothing about Regretting You that surprised me. That initial twist though did sneak up on me.
I was talking to my sister after finishing and we both felt like we weren't quite sure why Colleen Hoover decided to tell this story in particular.
Regretting You was good. I particularly enjoyed the ending. All of the parts involving Miller. I can't discuss Jonah really without spoilers. But I will say that had I known the true subject matter of Regretting You I might have chosen not to read this book. Even still Regretting You gets 4 Stars. Have you read Regretting You? What did you think? Let me know!
