Reminders of Him
"After serving five years in prison for a tragic mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild. Everyone in her daughter's life is determined to shut Kenna out, no matter how hard she works to prove herself. The only person who hasn't closed the door on her completely is Ledger Ward, a local bar owner and one of the few remaining links to Kenna's daughter. But if anyone were to discover how Ledger is slowly becoming an important part of Kenna's life, both would risk losing trust of everyone important to them. The two form a connection despite the pressure surrounding them, but as their romance grows, so does the risk. Kenna must find a way to absolve her past in order to build a future out of hope and healing."
Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover is a bit of a different flavor from the other works of her's that I have read thus far. It is more human, with less dramatic and unexpected twists. It is a tale of an honest, tragic mistake and how it completely wrecked the life of someone who has nowhere to go and nobody to turn to.
As someone who doesn't have much of a family and has had to stand on my own for my entire life, I found myself relating to Kenna. I was waiting on the edge of my seat for some profound revelation, like maybe her mistake had to do with an abuser or some villain.
It didn't. It was just that, a terrible mistake that tore the entire earth apart.
A mistake that separated mother and child; a mother and her life as she knew it. However, it is also a tale of prevailing love and steamy romance (in typical Hoover fashion). Thread by thread, the earth is somehow sewn back together before Kenna's eyes.
This tumultuous journey brought tears to my eyes, but it was the first Hoover novel to do so out of happiness in the conclusion of Kenna's story. It encapsulates the beautiful entropy this world throws at us; and the forgiveness and hope it sometimes bestows.