All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover

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Title: All Your Perfects
Author: Colleen Hoover
Published by: Atria Books
Release Date: July 17, 2018
Format: Kindle Book
Pages: 320
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Women's Fiction
Potential Triggers: View Spoiler »infertility, miscarriage, cheating « Hide Spoiler
Source: NetGalley
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 Backlist Reader Challenge, Lenoreo's 2022 COYER Winter, Lenoreo's 2022 Diversity Reading Challenge, Lenoreo's 2022 Netgalley and Edelweiss Challenge
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My rating:

Blurb:

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us—delivers a tour de force novel about a troubled marriage and the one old forgotten promise that might be able to save it.

Quinn and Graham’s perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair.

All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?

My Review:

4 stars — This was a rollercoaster ride of a book, mostly with my emotions.  There were parts that I absolutely ADORED beyond measure.  And there were parts that strained my sense of empathy.  I was happy in the end, but definitely emotionally exhausted.

Quinn and Graham were an exercise in patience in the Now chapters.  While I’m not the best communicator in the world, my god!  They were AWFUL at it!  We mostly saw Quinn’s side because we’re in her POV, but Graham was pretty awful at communication too.  I’m surprised they lasted 7 years.  And therapy is boring?  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I shy away from therapy too.  But I don’t think I’ve ever read 2 people who needed counselling more.

The Then chapters were an absolute delight.  I was drawn in from the very first chapter.  What a strange way to meet, a strange way to open a story.  But you could already feel their connection.  I kind of loved how the story was balanced between the Then and Now chapters.  We got to watch them fall in love while simultaneously falling apart.  I think it made it that much more heartbreaking, because you were seeing how solid they were initially, and how great a toll infertility was playing in their marriage.

I will admit that I don’t want children…and never have.  I was actually initially really offended with Quinn’s thought processes of how we’re only here for reproduction, so if she can’t do that she’s no use in the world.  But I had to remind myself that she was only focusing on herself, and not necessarily on others (especially given her sister).  So I definitely had a hard time connecting with Quinn’s all encompassing need to have children, and how it took over her life.  I felt bits of it, just through Ms. Hoover’s brilliant writing, but I still couldn’t completely understand it.  But I did get the resulting depression.

I think that made it harder for me to *get* the degree of the struggles this couple was going through.

View Spoiler »You know what’s weird?  Cheating is one of my button issues, and so I thought it would be that which tested me in this book.  And yeah, I still fucking hate cheating.  But wow, was that ever a much more complicated issue given the state of the marriage.  It’s funny reading the reviews, and how many people absolutely HATED Graham, and thought Quinn forgave him too easily.  But honestly?  I kept waiting for Quinn to do her part in the apology.  « Hide Spoiler

Quinn strained my ability to empathize on so many levels.  Maybe, it’s because I recognize glimmers of what she’s going through from a depression perspective, and some of her thoughts and feelings remind me of my own thoughts and feelings, and I HATE those parts of myself, so it was hard to not transfer that on to her.  But Quinn took it to a whole new level, and I just had a really hard time with how things played out on her side of the marriage.  I actually *felt* for Graham.  It doesn’t excuse what he did by any means, but even *he* didn’t excuse what he did.  He tried to explain, but not excuse.

The Then chapters were honestly 5+ stars.  I absolutely loved them as a couple, even if they were a bit over the top perfect in some ways.  They made me laugh and grin.  The Now chapters were more 3.5 stars.  I appreciated the rollercoaster journey, but I’m kind of exhausted now.  I wanted a bit more from Quinn at the end, but c’est la vie.  I will also say that I LOVED the ending.  In so many other stories it would have ended one way, and I would have been disappointed.  But Ms. Hoover took the road less travelled, and I *really* appreciated that.

The writing was lovely.  I highlighted so many bits.  The story may have been tough to digest, but the writing was beautiful.  And it flowed so smoothly, the story was easy to devour (by my brain, if not my heart).

COYER Community: I buddy read this book with Nadene from Totally Addicted to Reading, and she gave it 4 stars (her review).  I think we had fairly similar feelings about this book — it was nice to discuss things at the end with her.