“Without Merit”

Colleen Hoover

“ The same two things could happen to two people, but that doesn’t mean they would experience the exact same stress over it. We all have different levels of stress that we’re accustomed to. You probably felt the same amount of stress over your family situation as I sometimes do about mine, even though they’re completely on different levels. But that doesn’t make you weaker. It doesn’t make you an asshole. We’re just two different people with two different experiences.” 

Without Merit

Every other people have secrets buried deep inside their heart with promises that they would never share it with anyone. But with the increasing pile it gets hard enough to balance. Likewise, all of us have our own battle to fight for and fight in. the intensity doesn’t define our strength. We, humans, are warriors fighting with issues everyday.

Just because somebody’s problem seems lighter compared to yours doesn’t mean it isn’t tough for them. Colleen Hoover has portrayed the reality of the world in between this book.

Merit lives with her family at Dollar Voss, a church turned into a home in Texas. One day she just drops out of school without letting her parents know. She had a strange habit of collecting trophies. She would go to antique stores, shuffle through some and buy it. As always, she was shuffling through them when she feels that someone is staring at her. When she left the store the guy follows her and kisses her. She was liking the attention while this kiss ignited some sparkle of feelings in her. His phone rang and as he spoke to her it broke her heart. “You’re not Honor?” he said. Without a word Merit ran off form there. Honor is Merit’s identical twin. She also has an elder brother named Utah and a four-year-old stepbrother named Moby. Her father has two wives both named Victoria.

Next morning she wakes up to find Sagan, the guy from the store, is in her house for breakfast. She acts rude and cold as for the guilt of having kissed her sister’s boyfriend roams in her head. Then, another character named Luck, enters into the frame. Merit meets him in the store next to a gas station. He asks for a lift as he was new to the town and without hesitation Merit offers to help only to find out that he was stepbrother of her stepmother. Now nine people start living in the Dollar Voss. With so many secrets buried in Merits’ heart she gets overwhelmed and one night she tries to kill her self by drinking and eating twenty-eight pills. Before attempting to suicide she writes down all the secrets and slids in down under all the door of the house.

  “Having depression is no more out of your control than Sagan’s intolerance to milk, or Utah’s pale skin, or Honor’s bad vision. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. But it’s not something you can ignore or correct on your own. And it doesn’t make you abnormal. It makes you just as normal as these idiots,” he says, waving toward everyone else.” 

Merit has hard time accepting that she has depression and refuses to seek any help. But then her siblings, Luck and Sagan sit down and talk. Luck explains how it is normal and talking about it is does not make it abnormal. Finally, Merit agrees to go but only if all the family agrees to go.

Rating: * * * * *

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