Finding Cinderella: A Novella by Colleen Hoover

 

 Author of Hopeless, Colleen Hoover delivers another deeply emotional and compelling work!  Finding Cinderella might be a novella, but it will have you laughing and then crying.  It will make you sad and then you will find yourself happy in the end.

"I hate them," she says softly.
"Who?"
"Everybody," she says. "I hate everybody."
I close my eyes and lift my hand, then run it down her hair, doing my best to comfort her.  Finally, someone who actually gets it. I'm not sure why she hates everybody but I have a feeling she's got a pretty valid reason.
"I hate everybody too, Cinderella."

  This is not your ordinary Cinderella story.  Cinderella didn't make a connection with an unknown guy in a closet at her high school.  But that was a very defining moment in the life of two people: Six and Daniel.  The strange thing is that even though they had no idea who the other was at the time, they were deeply connected through their friends.  Six'x best friend, Sky, is dating Daniel's best friend, Holder.  After their hookup in the closet, Daniel cannot quit thinking about this mystery girl, while Six has no choice whether she can forget what happened between them.  When she comes back from Italy, she meets Daniel again.  But this time they actually meet and start dating.  Six has dramatically changed since Italy.  She no longer just sleeps with guys and wants something more from a relationship.  Daniel doesn't know what has gotten into him but he knows he is falling deeply for this girl who has secrets.  The trouble is that the secrets involve him, and they are never what he expected.  Now to just see if their relationship can stay standing with such a deep secret as this.


*image via Colleen Hoover
*quotes via Colleen Hoover

Hopeless by Colleen Hoover

   Sky Davis is about to be in her last year of high school.  For the first time she will be going to a public

school for her senior year.  Her mom, Karen, insisted on homeschooling her until this year.  Sky has lived a very sheltered, but good, life.  She was home schooled, her mom is against electronics (so she has no phone or television), and her best friend(Six) lives next door.  Six, however, goes to public school and has a reputation with the guys.  And although it has spilled over onto Sky (guilty by association) Sky is nothing like Six when it comes to boys.  She feels nothing when a guy touches her.  It's like everything shuts down.  And for some reason she likes that fact.  But she and Six sometimes wonder why.  Six thinks she might be broken.  Then Sky meets Dean Holder.  He is a dangerous guy according to the rumors circulating about him.  He has a temper that gets out of hand at times.  But the worst thing?  He is the only guy that Sky has ever felt anything for.  She is physically attracted to him and starts to like him too.  At first Holder is very enigmatic.  It seems like he has several sides to him, a regular Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  One minute he's happy, the next a storm is brewing.  Sky has no idea how to take it, until they decide to tentatively date.  But that is soon disrupted when she wears a bracelet to school that was from her past.  She doesn't remember anything from before she was adopted by Karen 13 years ago.  But Holder knows some things about her past that Sky doesn't remember.  Things that could cause her an endless amount of pain and confusion.  Although he doesn't want her hurting like that, he ends up having to explain that he knew her before she was adopted.  And Sky was best friends with him and his now deceased sister, Lesslie.  Things only get more complicated for Sky, who might not even really be Sky.  All Holder can do is be there for her, no matter what decisions she has to make.

The real reason I enjoy making out with guys is simply because it makes me feel completely and comfortably numb.

As soon as I lay eyes on him, I immediately notice three things:

1) His amazingly perfect white teeth hidden behind that seductively crooked grin.

2) The dimples that form in the crevices between the corners of his lips and cheeks when he smiles.

3) I'm pretty sure I'm having a hot flash.  Or I have butterflies.  Or maybe I'm coming down with a stomach virus.

 Dean Holder feels like he lost Sky so many years ago.  Although his guilt is still there, it is unfounded.  And then he loses his twin sister.  Her death is also a burden to him.  Holder feels like he should have seen something was wrong with his sister, some indication that she would take her own life.  But most of all, he is angry with Lesslie.  For being selfish and leaving just like Sky did.  When he meets Sky so many years later, he isn't even sure that it's her until he sees the bracelet.  It solidifies that this was definitely the girl he had been looking for all this time.  And she was with him.  Unfortunately he just pushes her away for a while, unsure of how to handle everything that is going on, because obviously she doesn't remember anything.  And when she does, it's nothing that even he is prepared for.

*quotes via Colleen Hoover

*image via Colleen Hoover