Emily May's Reviews > Maybe Someday

I am conducting what I'm shelving as a "New Adult (NA) Experiment". I'm going to work my way through some of the popular New Adult books and see if I can weed out the crap and hopefully find some surprising gems. Here's hoping!

You know, I promised myself something before starting this book: either I would decide it wasn't for me and DNF it without a review, or I would be pleasantly surprised and continue to the end and write a glowing oh-my-I-can't-believe-it positive review. Neither actually happened. I finished this book and I enjoyed parts of it. I hated others. I only picked the arc up out of curiosity because, as much as I disliked both the author's other books, there was a HUGE improvement in the writing between Slammed and Hopeless. In fact, I even mentioned in my review of the latter that it was almost a good book. What stopped it from being a good book was the glorifying of control freaks and stalker-ish behaviour.

I felt a similar way about Maybe Someday. It was almost a good book and it was definitely better than the other two I've read. I'm starting to think that, if this pattern persists, Hoover might actually write a book I love in about five years time. There's a reason I managed to read every single page of this with ease and it's the same reason I made it through Hopeless - the author writes in an addictive, engaging style. Some people just manage to pull this off and make it seem effortless. It's so easy, so palatable, that you manage to finish it without realising where all the pages went. Hoover definitely deserves credit for that, if nothing else. I think I keep returning to this author because I know she writes so well.

The main things I liked:
Apart from what I mentioned above about the author's addictive easy-to-read style, I also liked the guy in this a lot more than in Hoover's previous works. Dean Holder from Hopeless managed to freak me out and piss me off simultaneously. He was a tall, gorgeous message to teen girls that stalkery, predatory behaviour is absolutely fine when the person doing it is hot. I mean, how much stupid is in this quote:

"My instinct is telling me to run and scream, but my body wants to wrap itself around his glistening, sweaty arms."

But Ridge isn't like that. He's sweet, he's a musician, he's completely free of Douchebag Syndrome. Oh, and he's also deaf. Personally, I thought this was an interesting and original touch that was explored well and sensitively. Very few hearing-impaired protagonists exist, never mind sexy love interests and I really liked this unique view of a relationship where one person is unable to hear the other. They communicate a lot via text and facebook, which was also different.

Where did it all go wrong?
The same place it always seems to go wrong in the New Adult genre: the way every woman but the MC is portrayed. I admit that I almost DNF'd this book after the prologue because Sydney (the MC) calls another girl a whore on page one, and then a few pages later has an encounter with a bitchy girl who - surprise! - is wearing a Hooters uniform:

I don't know why she's complaining about getting wet, when there isn't much clothing to get wet. She's wearing next to nothing. I glance at her shirt, which is missing its entire bottom half, and realize she's in a Hooters outfit. Could this day get any weirder? I'm sitting on almost everything I own in a torrential downpour, being bossed around by a bitchy Hooters waitress.



But, unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. I'm starting to wonder if this whole slut-shaming thing in NA is a group conspiracy. It seems to be a defining feature of the genre. Once again, every woman is Sydney's enemy and they are all "whores" or "sluts" who are unfavorably compared to our "good girl" MC. The book is saturated with language that either openly shames other women or snidely implies it. Like, for example, calling Tori "Barbie" - a word which is meant to emphasise the difference between the sexualized depiction of Tori and Sydney's good and pure behaviour. At one point, Sydney even doubts that Bridgette (Hooters girl) has it in her to love anyone. There is often a direct connection in these kind of books between being evil or "bitchy" and sleeping around. I feel like I'm being hit in the face with Sunday school.

You will probably like this book if:
- You liked the author's other books.
- You tend to like NA contemporary romance.
- You are not pissed off by 1950s-style portrayals of women.