Reminders of Him

Review #1

Reminders of Him audiobook free

Some personal background first. In 2010 my cousin, who was 21, was involved in a car accident. I don’t remember all the intricate details, but he got into a verbal altercation with another person in a parking lot that moved to the road. The two drivers (one being my cousin) we’re racing where the other vehicle was driving in the oncoming lane and ended up clipping my cousin’s vehicle. The other vehicle wrecked and three occupants died. My cousin left the scene, drove back by, didn’t stop and also didn’t call 911. He was sentenced to 99 years for three counts of murder and 10 years for leaving the scene of an accident with injuries to be served consecutively after his 99 year sentence. The judge assumed that he had no remorse due to his stoic appearance in court. He is still serving his first sentence in a state prison. He had a three year old daughter and a wife when he was sentenced. He is now divorced, and his ex-wife and daughter have moved to Virginia. I don’t know when the last time he’s seen his daughter. I have only met her once.

I started reading Colleen Hoover in 2012 when Slammed was available for review on NetGalley. I loved it. And she became an auto-buy author for me. After 20+ books, I feel like I know her writing style to the point where she surprises me less and less even with her books such as Verity and Layla. As a matter of fact, her most recently published books have been my least favorite she’s written… until Reminders of Him. This book reminded me of old Colleen Hoover.

Kenna was involved in a car accident with her boyfriend. She was driving. She was under the influence. She thought he was dead. She couldn’t find a cell phone, and so she left the scene of the accident. I won’t get into more than that with the details because that’s part of the story. But she was barely pregnant and subsequently gave birth while incarcerated. Her daughter was taken from her care and placed in the custody of her boyfriend’s parents. She has now, 4 years later, been released and hopes to reestablish her connection with her daughter.

Ledger was Scottie, Kenna’s boyfriend’s, best friend. He wasn’t around much when Kenna and Scottie started dating so he’d never met the girl who murdered his best friend. Ledger has spent the last 5 years creating a version of Kenna in his head. Only when he finally meets her in person, not knowing who she is, he slowly comes to find out that she isn’t anything he imagined her to be.

The pain in this book was palpable. Every single character is deeply filled with pain. Kenna lost the love of her life and her daughter in and because of one terrible moment and decision. Scottie’s parents are so filled with grief that they can’t see past their own pain to anyone else’s. Ledger is hurting too. He misses his friend, he loves Scottie’s parents like his own, he wants to protect Diem (Scottie and Kenna’s daughter), and he’s falling for the one person he never could have imagined.

Favorite quotes:
-She’s quiet, but she’s said just enough to make me want the rest of her words.

-It’s incredible how two people who have never met can have so many of the same mannerisms.

-It proves that time, distance, and devastation allow people enough opportunity to craft villains out of people they don’t even know.

I only had two complaints that I can remember right now. Roman is a side character who happens to have a crush on a married woman. He isn’t actively pursuing her. Like he’s not asking her out or anything. But he does regularly show up at her bakery to buy cupcakes from her. He’s wishing for her marriage to fail. I think this sucks. Obviously these people exist. Not all people, married and unmarried, respect the commitment two people make to each other. But sheesh, I think enough marriages fail on their own without outsiders wishing, hoping, and waiting for their opportunity to swoop in and snatch one party up. I just wish this wasn’t included even though it was such a small part of the overall story.

My second complaint is, yet again, Colleen Hoover uses letters as a major plot component. At first I wondered if she was doing this out of like a writing shortcut. You know how a villain will spell out all of their evil plans to the hero of a movie in one big speech. Well, in several of her books I’ve felt like she uses letters as big information drops. And she does that again in Reminders of Him. I can’t say CoHo is reading my reviews of her books, but I honestly felt like she was almost using the letters in Reminders of Him to spite me. That’s very conceited of me, I realize. So what I think is the more likely option is that she’s doing it on purpose. Maybe this is becoming a calling card of hers or something. Like she’s seeking out opportunities to include letters in her books rather than using them as a crutch to dump information. I would still like to see her write a book that doesn’t include a letter like these, but we’ll see.

Reminders of Him was my favorite Colleen Hoover release in the last several years. This blows Verity and Layla and especially Regretting You out of the water. I used to feel a little apathetic towards her books due to repetition and the big reveal being more important than the journey, but Reminders of Him renewed my Colleen Hoover enthusiasm. The similarities and differences to my own cousin’s life and accident made this all the more relatable to me. Reminders of Him gets 5 Stars. Have you read Reminders of Him? What did you think? Let me know!

Review #2

Reminders of Him audiobook

I actually read this book for the kindle challenge, it was the only book that looked better than the others…. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did…. Excellent author, this book was so well written, I could feel the emotions in this book…. There were parts in this book that broke my heart…. Watching Kenny go threw the struggle, replay the car accident even with her boyfriend Scotty, not fighting her case because she felt like she needed to be punish because she felt guilty, then find out she was pregnant while she was in jail…. TlScotty parents found out and went for custody of the baby, and take all her rights away, since she was sentence to five years the judge granted scotty’s parents full custody of the baby who is Diem…. Kenny writes to Scotty since he passed away…. Ledger meets Kenny at a bar no knowing that she was the one that killed his bestfriend, they hit it off at first but soon after he found who she is…. Kenny made herself broke moving to the same town as her daughter, that is where she also meets the owner of the bar Ledger who used to be Scotty bestfriend…. They end up having a connection before either know who each other are…. Everyone in town wants her gone…. Scotty parents haven’t forgive her…. Things get complicated, she has no money to move again so she ends up working at the bar to ger extra money that’s when her and Ledger get closer…. He sees a different side of her and realize she would be good for Diem, the only thing is trying to convince Scotty’s parents who still hate her and want nothing to do with her…..

Review #3

Audiobook Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover

I’ve been hearing about Colleen Hoover on TikTok for about a year now and finally took the plunge myself with Reminders of Him. Coworkers, friends, heck, even my FedEx driver have been begging me to get on with it and enter Colleen Hoovers world and this particular book spoke to me at a particular time I was in the right head space to read something like this. I had been prepared and warned by everyone that I would ugly cry my heart out throughout this book so determinedly dove in, ready for an emotional upheaval.

Well it never really happened. I’ve been reading a ton of reviews at how vulgar this book is and half full of smüt…um…are they serious?! There was literally NONE at all as far as I’m concerned. I am sitting here wracking my brain trying to remember any smütty scenes which is saying a lot as I JUST finished this book. You’d think they’d be fresh in my mind but nope! This book was so tame that my 80’s regency authors even put this to shame! Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey and Jude Deveraux would REALLY shock those who felt THIS was a naughty read! SMH THE F bomb was dropped a couple of times so that made it vulgar for some. Wow…I think I’m broken or something as this book didn’t even blip on my radar on any major level – vulgar, smütty, super emotional, nothing! Which leaves me feeling uncomfortable when I go back to work and have to give my review of this book to all those who LOVED it.

*****************SPOILERS***************

I actually kinda liked Kenna, I felt for her but she did cry for about 90% of the book and that was rough but her humble acquiescence to not interfere with the raising of her daughter was pretty big of her. The grandparents raised her right and showered her with love. That made me smile. Kenna doing everything in her power to get back to Diem and fix her life as best she could for her daughter made me respect her. Who am I to judge if she “paid enough” for the crime of killing the love of her life? In my humble opinion living with that knowledge is punishment enough. She can never bring him back and has to live every single day relieving THE most horrific moment in her life…then not being in the life of the only person that shared her and Scotty’s DNA?! Yeah, those forms of payment are heavy in & of themselves.

Kenna is a woman broken and trying to put some pieces back together. Suicidal thoughts and actions plagued her, wanting to join Scotty and realizing she did indeed have something to live for…those story lines were good ones. They almost had me shedding a tear. Some of this book got me in the feels but most of it left me feeling flat. I did NOT, even remotely, feel the love connect between Ledger and Kenna. I’m left scratching my head how they fell in “love” it seemed super sudden and with no build up, heat, passion, tension, nothing to justify them all of a sudden, being in love. The character development was lacking. Same with all the relationship development. I felt like I was being told how they felt and not shown how the relationships grew if that makes any sense. They were not believable and left me feeling disappointed. It was slow moving and could have been at least 100 pages shorter. I just never had a connection with the characters and that was a LONG read to never have that come to fruition except for the tiny bit I did with Kenna.

My favorite part though were the letters to Scotty. Those are the moments in the story where I felt this book was genuine. That the feelings were felt, not told, that we really got an insight to Kennas physique and could root for her. Otherwise, this was just a pleasant read that I could take or leave. It wasn’t a bad book per-say, just not a good one, in my opinion, either. I’m glad I got to finally read a CoHo book but won’t be picking up anymore any time soon either.

Review #4

Audio Reminders of Him narrated by Brittany Pressley

Não sei como descrever em palavras o que senti lendo esse livro. Foi quase um misto de sofrimento com angústia com ódio pela aquela situação da Kenna! Meu coração sofreu do início ao fim do livro. A Kenna oficialmente é minha personagem feminina favorita por conta de toda a sua força e resiliência, ela é uma mulher extremamente inspiradora. O Ledger me estressou um pouco no início, mas, agora que acabei o livro, entendo mais ele. No final, chorei demais por causa dele e acabei de me apaixonar por ele. A escrita da Colleen como sempre estava perfeita, incrível, maravilhosa e viciante! Li esse livro em apenas um dia pois eu sabia que não conseguiria viver sem saber que a Kenna estava bem. Chorei cinco vezes com essa história e as cinco doeram DEMAIS! A dor da Kenna foi se alastrando por mim de uma forma indescritível. A Colleen soube passar essa dor da personagem para os leitores. Esse é sem dúvidas meu livro favorito da autora, superou todos os que li até agora. A jornada da Kenna me marcou muito e fico extremamente feliz de ter tido a honra de ler a história dela.

Review #5

Free audio Reminders of Him – in the audio player below

I am so glad I pre ordered this book. I have sat for 6 hours going through every single emotion imaginable! I won’t give anything away but of course Colleen Hoover has done it again. She never fails to leave you contemplating your own actions in life. The moral of this story is a one everyone can relate to. What an amazing story! Definitely a one that’s going to stay with me for a while.

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