Maybe #1
At twenty-two years old, aspiring musician Sydney Blake has a great life: She’s in college, working a steady job, in love with her wonderful boyfriend, Hunter, and rooming with her good friend, Tori. But everything changes when she discovers Hunter cheating on her with Tori—and she is left trying to decide what to do next.
Sydney becomes captivated by her mysterious neighbor, Ridge Lawson. She can’t take her eyes off him or stop listening to the daily guitar playing he does out on his balcony. She can feel the harmony and vibrations in his music. And there’s something about Sydney that Ridge can’t ignore, either: He seems to have finally found his muse. When their inevitable encounter happens, they soon find themselves needing each other in more ways than one…
Author: Colleen Hoover
Series: N/A
Published: March 18th 2014 by Atria Books
Source: Goodreads
Thoughts: I can’t tell you how much I dislike books that have a future prologue and then the first chapter is about what happened before the prologue took place. I. Don’t. Care.
You have me a prologue now I want the first chapter to bounce forward off the prologue not backwards. Now I have to guess when things are going to be present day and I hate that!
HOLY EIGHTBALLS! WHAT?! I wasn’t expecting that, how does this work? WHAAAATTTT!!!!????? I feel like all my other senses are coming into play because Ridge is deaf. It’s like watching a silent movie, texting being the captions. It’s weird. You see how the characters interact. Reading Ridge being deaf isn’t that different from reading a character that can speak, yet it is different; there’s a whole other layer underneath it all.
Despite the rocky start, I am completely enamored with this book. It’s so much more than your typical love story/HEA. It’s realizing that there’s more to love than two hearts finding each other. Watching Ridge and Sydney fight their attraction in such a real and distinct way, is heartbreaking yet eye-opening. They’re such honest to goodness nice people. And not the nice like Saint nice, but the everyday nice person who has honor and integrity, who don’t let their feelings overshadow their good sense.
“It’s nature’s fault, because attraction is an ugly beast, and I’ll be damned if I don’t conquer it.”
While I’m reading I can’t help but think
“Why am I not thinking that this is a cycle of the same we can’t be together shit?”
I really should be getting frustrated with how they can’t act on feelings and whatnot, but I can’t. If it were me, I’d be circling around the same problem. Any girl would. There’s a constant battle of wills, a push and pull of emotions, I understand. I can’t be irrational and say,
“Oh no, not again, what was Colleen Hoover thinking,” I know what she was thinking, she was thinking how you fall in love and fight that love, its hard to fight it off in just a few chapters, especially when it never leaves and you’re constantly reminded of how you feel.
But despite all these heavy emotions, it’s not all grouped into a couple of chapters. There is plenty of comedic relief. The natural kind where all the characters come into play and it feels like you’re reading about your life with your friends. Prank wars, funny flaws about each other, parties, normal roommate issues. Everything is so RL you forget that you’re reading a story.
My biggest problem was Ridge. He seems to think Maggie is so fragile, that because of her illness she can’t or shouldn’t be wild and live to the fullest. And I’m glad she points it out to him.
Being afraid to leave someone because you love them is one thing, not wanting to leave them because you think they can’t handle the stress of a heart-break is another.
Honestly I think Maggie and Ridge are better off as friends and not because I want him to be with Sydney but because I feel like their relationship no longer works. Their love for each other isn’t the passionate all-consuming love that lasts a lifetime, or maybe it is but it’s not the right love for the situation they find themselves in.
Their love was right for where they were in their lives. There’s more than one love of your life.
I get the feeling that his connection to Sydney could be solely music related, the tension, the emotions could just stem from their mutual love of music, compounded with the fact that they are writing together and he’s deaf brings the playing field to a whole other level, but I know its more than that, it’s more than what he has with Maggie, his connection with Sydney is on a different plane.
” I wanted to tell her the only regret I have is not realizing sooner which of them I was better for. Which girl I made more sense with. Which girl I grew to love in a realistic, natural way, not in an idealized sense.”
Breath in, breathe out
Expand, contract
Beat beat, pause. Beat beat, pause
That’s my new mantra. I didn’t notice that while I’m reading these words I’m unconsciously repeating them in my thoughts and actions because everything inside me just stops.
Breath in, breathe out
Expand, contract
Beat beat, pause. Beat beat, pause
Happy Reading!
P.S. Listen to the songs while reading, your reading experience will be so much richer!
5 STARS
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