Maybe Someday - Colleen Hoover (2014)

Sydney's 22nd birthday has turned into a nightmare. Instead of celebrating with boyfriend Hunter and best friend Tori, she's found out they've been cheating on her, taken her anger out on them with her fists, and ended up accepting a room at the apartment of Ridge, whom she knows nothing about other than his music. And it's his music that helps her heal. But what starts out as a simple musical bond is soon straying into more intimate territory. But since Ridge has a girlfriend of five years, neither Sydney nor Ridge are prepared to let their feelings get the better of them. Original doesn't even begin to cover this amazing book - astonishing, breathtaking and groundbreaking come closer. Hoover gives everything a new meaning, a new resonance and quality in this story, this is New Adult 2.0. Sydney and Ridge are great characters and it's refreshing to see them not as overly tortured martyrs, but with real, relatable and new struggles, clearly rooted in the present rather than dominated by their pasts. Ridge's predicament is especially refreshing and in many ways makes the novel. The moral dilemma of Ridge and Sydney's relationship - the fact that they aren't bad people, that they want to be loyal and do the right thing - is gripping and thought-provoking too. Whilst it was sometimes difficult to accept Ridge's divided affections, it added real depth and challenge to the book and it was interesting to see how the situation played out. The way the story is constructed from prose, texts, letters, lyrics and the music itself really makes this more than a book, it's an experience. With an original soundtrack written and produced especially for this novel everything about this project is amazing, so creative, so special, so unique. And hearing Ridge's words in chapter 19 is one of, if not, the most amazing moments in New Adult fiction. (JC)

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