Regretting You by Colleen Hoover Series: Standalone Novel
Published by Montlake Romance on 12/10/19
Genres: Contemporary Romance, Women's Fiction
Pages: 365
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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 such a beautiful story about things turning out perfectly okay under the most imperfectly complicated circumstances. CoHo had me feeling so many things on these pages, palpable things like anger and heartache, grief and injustice, longing and forgiveness, joy, satisfaction and blissful contentment. I laughed. I cried. I was stunned speechless. I was giddy over the romance, I ached over the drama. I wanted to scream and knock holes in things and destroy. I felt ALL OF IT and it was just incredible.
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. This post also contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using the links below, I will receive a small commission from the sale.
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Jessica’s Review
I don’t want you to know a single thing before you open this book. I’m not even sure how much the blurb gives away because I still haven’t read it. I just want you to dive headfirst into Regretting You exactly the way I did and let it swallow you up in the absorbing way only Colleen Hoover seems to be able to. I couldn’t read this book fast enough. I went to bed thinking about it, woke up thinking about it, and now that I’m finished, I guarantee I’ll be thinking about it for days to come. In Miller’s words, this was EPIC.
As I’ve already said, I don’t want to say a thing about the storyline itself. The way it unfolds, the shocking twists and turns in the story are simply BRILLIANT and if you know anything at all about it ahead of time, it might not nail you in the gut the way it should. The way it’s written, through alternating perspectives of a mother and daughter whose lives and relationship are on a downward spiral is just FANTASTIC. The way the secrets and the truths reveal themselves at just the right times… STELLAR. Everything about this book is quintessential Colleen Hoover yet so unlike anything else ever written before. I can’t say it enough, it’s perfection and I loved every single bit of it.
I’ll tell you that this is a story as much about love as it is about family. It’s a wholly relatable story about the mother/daughter dynamic and it hit home for me HARD as both a mother and as a daughter. It really does illuminate the growing pains of parenting, the way so much can change while the need to protect and shelter never will. It was a kick right to the gut feeling Clara’s resentment and anger toward her mother, such completely authentic reactions yet so brutally heartbreaking to witness. I just FELT all of it. I got it, the way we so easily unleash on those closest to us, on the people who make us feel safest. And as maddening as it was to watch Morgan absorb all this pain silently, I understood that relentless need to protect her child. It was such a REAL, honest portrayal amidst the most jaw dropping course of events and I felt it. I felt all of it.
Regretting You is such a beautiful story about things turning out perfectly okay under the most imperfectly complicated circumstances. CoHo had me feeling so many things on these pages, palpable things like anger and heartache, grief and injustice, longing and forgiveness, joy, satisfaction and blissful contentment. I had so many questions, so many unanswered things I felt like I needed answers to, explanations for. I felt precisely what Morgan must have felt initially, like she wanted to rage but there was no one there to answer for it and even if there was, what answers would ever be sufficient? It was so well done, this book, so RIGHT and so REAL and so unbelievably emotional along the way. I laughed. I cried. I was stunned speechless. I was giddy over the romance, I ached over the drama. I wanted to scream and knock holes in things and destroy. I felt ALL OF IT and it was just incredible.
Excerpt
Despite knowing I just pissed my mother off by being half an hour late for curfew, I still can’t stop smiling. That kiss with Miller was worth it. I bring my fingers to my lips.
I’ve never been kissed like that. The guys I’ve kissed in the past all seemed like they were in a hurry, wanting to shove their tongue in my mouth before I changed my mind.
Miller was the opposite. He was so patient, yet in a chaotic way. It was like he’d thought about kissing me so often that he wanted to savor every second of it.
I don’t know that I’ll ever not smile when I think about that kiss. It kind of makes me nervous for school tomorrow. I’m not sure where that kiss leaves us, but it felt like it was a statement. I just don’t know what exactly that statement was.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. I roll over and pull it out, then fall onto my back again. It’s a text from Miller.
Miller: I don’t know about you, but sometimes when something significant happens, I get home and think of all the things I wish had gone differently. All the things I wish I would have said.
Me: Is that happening now?
Miller: Yes. I don’t feel like I was entirely forthcoming with you.
I roll onto my stomach, hoping to ease the nausea that just passed through me. It was going so well…
Me: What weren’t you honest about?
Miller: I was honest. Just not entirely forthcoming, if there’s a difference. I left a lot out of our conversation that I want you to know.
Me: Like what?
Miller: Like why I’ve liked you for as long as I have.
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t. I’m staring at my phone with so much intensity that I almost throw it when it rings unexpectedly. It’s Miller’s phone number. I hesitate before answering it, because I rarely ever talk on the phone. I much prefer texting. But he knows I have my phone in my hand, so I can’t very well send it to voice mail. I swipe my finger across the screen and then roll off the bed and head to my bathroom for more privacy. I sit on the edge of the tub.
“Hello?”
“Hey,” he says.
“Sorry. It’s too much to text.”
“You’re kind of freaking me out with all the innuendos.”
“Oh. No, it’s all good. Don’t be nervous. I just should have said this to you in person.” Miller inhales a deep breath, and then on the exhale, he starts talking. “When I was fifteen, I watched you in a school play. You had the lead role, and at one point, you performed a monologue that went on for like two whole minutes. You were so convincing and you looked so heartbroken I was ready to walk onto the stage and hug you. When the play was finally over and the actors came back out onto the stage, you were smiling and laughing, and there wasn’t a trace of that character left in you. I was in awe, Clara. You have this charisma about you that I don’t think you’re aware of, but it’s captivating. I was a scrawny kid as a sophomore, and even though I’m a year older than you, I hadn’t quite filled out yet, and I had acne and felt inferior to you, so I never worked up the courage to approach you. Another year went by, and I continued to admire you from afar. Like that time you ran for school treasurer and tripped walking off the stage, but you jumped up and did this weird little kick and threw your arms up in the air and made the entire audience laugh. Or that time Mark Avery popped your bra strap in the hallway, and you were so sick of him doing it that you followed him to his classroom, reached inside your hoodie, and took off your bra and then threw it at him. I remember you yelling something like, ‘If you want to touch a bra so damn bad, just keep it, you perv!’ Then you stormed out. It was epic. Everything you do is epic, Clara. Which is why I never had the courage to approach you, because an epic girl needs an equally epic guy, and I guess I’ve just never felt epic enough for you. I’ve said epic so many times in the last fifteen seconds—I’m so sorry.”
He’s out of breath when he finally stops talking.
I’m smiling so hard my cheeks ache. I had no idea he felt this way. No idea.
I wait a few seconds to make sure he’s done; then I finally respond. I’m pretty sure he can hear from my voice alone that I’m smiling. “First of all, it’s hard to believe you were ever insecure. And second, I think you’re pretty epic, too, Miller. Always have. Even when you were scrawny and had acne.”
He laughs a little. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I can hear him sigh. “Glad I got that off my chest, then. See you at school tomorrow?”
“Good night.”
We end the call, and I don’t know how long I sit and stare at my phone.
About the Author
Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of several novels, including the bestselling women’s fiction novel It Ends with Us and the bestselling psychological thriller Verity. She has won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance three years in a row—for Confess (2015), It Ends with Us (2016), and Without Merit (2017). Confess was adapted into a seven-episode online series. In 2015, Hoover and her family founded the Bookworm Box, a bookstore and monthly subscription service that offers signed novels donated by authors. All profits go to various charities each month to help those in need. Hoover lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys. Visit www.colleenhoover.com.
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