Losing Hope

I picked up Losing Hope because Hopeless left me uneasy about Holder. I liked him, but I did not fully trust him. Colleen Hoover published Losing Hope with Atria Books in 2013, a 336 page companion in the Hopeless series with ISBN 9781476746555. It tells much of the same timeline as Hopeless, but from Dean Holder's point of view, and it adds his childhood with his twin Less, his guilt, and his search for a girl named Hope. If Hopeless was Sky remembering, this is Holder confessing. It is sadder, angrier, and in places kinder, because we finally hear what he was hiding when he pushed Sky so hard.

Holder opens the book tired in a way teenage boys rarely admit. He is tall, tattooed, lip ring, skateboard, quick to fight at school. People see trouble. Inside he is grieving his twin sister Less, who died by suicide, and he is haunted by a small girl from his childhood he could not save. Her name was Hope. She lived next door for a time when they were very young. He remembers playing, laughing, a closeness that felt like family. Then she vanished. Then years later Less died. Holder stitched those losses into one story about his failure. If I had watched closer. If I had asked more. If I had been braver. That loop runs under everything he does.

The early chapters reframe scenes I thought I understood from Hopeless. The parking lot confrontation with Sky, where he seemed aggressive and magnetic, reads different from inside his head. He sees a girl who looks like Hope grown up, who uses the same phrases, who tilts her head the same way. He feels sick and certain at once. He accuses, he backs off, he follows. From Sky's view it felt like stalking with charm. From his view it feels like panic. He is terrified to be wrong and terrified to be right. If she is Hope, then his whole theory about his past cracks open. If she is not, then he is harassing a stranger for no reason. He knows he is crossing lines. He does it anyway. That honesty does not excuse the behavior, but it explains why he cannot stop.

Hoover does something smart with Holder's voice. Sky narrated Hopeless with wit and distance, jokes as armor. Holder narrates plainly, with less humor and more shame. He notices physical things. Hands shaking. Breath catching. He counts his own mistakes. He talks to Less in his head. He writes letters he never sends. He lifts weights until his arms burn because pain quiets thought. That physical coping will feel familiar to many teen boys who were never taught to name grief. I found his chapters heavier to read, not because the writing is dense, but because he never looks away from his own worst moments. He admits jealousy. He admits using fists to feel in control. He admits wanting Sky to need him because being needed feels like redemption.

Hope and Less

To follow this book you have to hold two girls in mind. Hope was a neighbor girl when Holder and Less were about five or six. Small, bright, always near the Holder twins. Holder remembers her laugh in their yard, sharing snacks, running between houses. Then Hope's father took her away suddenly, or so the story went at the time. No goodbye that a child could understand. Holder kept her memory like a toothache.

Less, real name Charlize but called Less, was Holder's twin. Close in the way twins are portrayed as sharing language. As teens Less grew withdrawn, sad, angry in bursts. Holder remembers fights, closed doors, his parents worried but busy. Then Less died. The family never fully recovered. Holder's mother went quiet. His father worked more. Holder got tattoos to mark what he could not say. One for Less. One for Hope, though he did not tell anyone that part.

What Holder slowly learns, and what Hopeless revealed from Sky's side, is that Hope and Sky are the same person, and that Less's death connects to what happened to Hope as a child. I will stay vague here because the details involve kidnapping and child sexual abuse, and because Hoover herself reveals them in pieces. The point for Losing Hope is not the mystery twist. The point is Holder's guilt when he understands. He was a little boy who played beside a girl who was being harmed and did not see it. He was a teenage brother who lived beside a sister who was hurting and did not stop it. Adult logic says a five year old cannot protect anyone, and a teen cannot read minds. Grief logic says otherwise. Holder lives in grief logic for most of the book.

Scenes with Less in flashback are the strongest writing. Hoover shows twins doing ordinary things. Watching TV with feet tangled. Stealing fries. Texting during class. Less teasing Holder about a crush. Then small shifts. Less wearing long sleeves in heat. Less flinching when a certain neighbor visits. Less crying after a family dinner and saying nothing is wrong too fast. Holder replays these moments as an older teen with new knowledge and hates himself for missing them. Any reader who has lost someone to suicide will recognize that replay. It is not rational. It is love trying to time travel.

Seeing Sky

When Holder meets Sky Davis in present day, she is adopted, homeschooled by her mother Karen, starting public school for senior year with her best friend Six. From Hopeless we know Sky feels numb when kissing, has no memories before age five, jokes to cover blankness. Holder does not know all that at first. He just sees Hope's eyes in an older face.

His pursuit in these middle chapters is intense and, frankly, uncomfortable. He shows up where she runs. He texts too much. He gets jealous of other boys. He demands answers about her past while refusing to share his own. Reading it after Hopeless, I felt protective of Sky in a way I had not the first time. Why does he get to push? Why does Sky forgive so fast? Hoover seems aware of this problem. She lets Six call Holder out. Six tells him he is acting obsessed. Breckin, kind and steady, watches with worry. Even Holder's mother warns him to slow down. Those outside voices matter. They keep the book from endorsing pursuit as romance.

What saves Holder is that he listens when Sky sets limits, at least after he messes up first. A scene in his car after a fight stands out. Sky says she feels dizzy when he touches her throat, that she freezes and cannot explain why. Holder's first instinct is to solve, to ask for the story. Then he stops, asks what she needs right now, and just sits with her while she breathes. That shift from fixing to staying is the whole arc in miniature. He repeats it later, better, after the full truth comes out. Consent here is not just about kissing. It is about memory. Do not force remembering. Offer safety and wait.

Sky and Holder's dates in this retelling feel softer because we know his fear underneath. The arcade, the grocery run, the run together in the morning. He is trying to be normal while carrying panic. He laughs with Six and Breckin at lunch, grateful for friends who treat him as a person rather than a tragedy. Breckin, a gay Mormon kid bullied at school, gets particular care from Holder. Holder walks him home after threats, not as a savior but as someone who knows what it feels like to be watched. Those friendship scenes balance the romance and show Holder as capable of steady care, not just intense love.

Truth and guilt

The last third turns heavy. Sky begins to remember in flashes. A house. A smell. A voice. A tile pattern. Holder recognizes the house because he played there as a child. He realizes whose house it was, who had access, how close evil lived to ordinary barbecues. Hoover writes his realization without sensational detail. Focus stays on his nausea, his shaking hands, his urge to hit something and his choice not to.

Holder's guilt spikes in a way that worried me as a reader. He thinks Less died because he failed, Hope was taken because he failed, Sky is hurting because he failed. He punishes himself with sleepless runs, with picking fights, with refusing food. His parents find him on the floor once, crying without sound. That image stayed with me. Hoover does not romanticize his suffering. She shows his mother sitting with him, not fixing, just saying I am here, you were a child, you did not cause this. His father, distant for much of the book, says plainly that loving someone does not mean preventing all harm. Those parental lines feel earned because the parents have their own grief and have been imperfect.

The disclosure scenes between Holder and Sky are written with care for a 2013 young adult novel. They sit, often with space between them. Sky tells in fragments. Holder does not ask for details to satisfy his own need for a complete timeline. He asks if she wants to stop. He believes immediately. That believing matters. Many survivors in real life are met with doubt or questions about proof. Holder offers the opposite. I believe you. It was not your fault. We go at your speed. If you are reading this with your own history, I hope you have someone who speaks to you that way. If not, please reach out to a trusted person or a support line. The book is fiction, but the need for belief is real.

Hoover also addresses Less's story with more directness here than in Hopeless. Less left letters. Holder finally reads them with Sky nearby, not alone. The letters do not explain everything. They show a girl who felt trapped, who loved her brother, who could not ask for help in words adults heard. Holder learns that Less tried to tell in ways he missed because he was young and because adults around them minimized. That is painful and important. It shifts blame from Holder alone to a wider failure of attention, without letting anyone off the hook for cruelty. People who harmed children in this book made choices. Children who missed signs did not.

What drags

This book repeats a lot if you just finished Hopeless. Whole conversations appear again, now with Holder's inner thoughts added. Sometimes that addition deepens. Often it feels like rereading with footnotes. At 336 pages it moves faster than Hopeless at 416, but the middle still sags with school hallways, texts, parking lot standoffs. If you read the two back to back, take a break between. I did not and felt tired around page 180.

Holder's voice can also feel narrow. Sky noticed the world. Holder notices Sky. His observations of Six and Breckin are kind but thin compared to Sky's portraits. His mother and father blur until late chapters. That narrowness fits grief, but it makes some sections feel like a love story with background extras rather than a community story. Hopeless balanced romance and friendship better.

The early possessiveness remains a problem even with explanation. Knowing Holder thought Sky was Hope does not make following her acceptable. Hoover has Holder apologize and change, which helps, but readers who were bothered in Hopeless will be more bothered here because we sit inside the rationalization. I found myself arguing with him in margins. Good, I think. Books should invite argument. Just do not mistake his growth for permission. Intensity is not proof of love. Staying, listening, and respecting no are.

Who it is for

Read Losing Hope if Hopeless left you wondering what Holder hid, if you like companion novels that reframe rather than continue, if you want a portrayal of a grieving teen boy that allows tears without shame. It pairs well with books about memory and healing, but it is heavier than typical contemporary romance. Content about child abuse, kidnapping, suicide, and self harm runs through it, not as twists but as lived past. Take breaks. Skip detailed pages if needed. The story holds.

Atria Books published it in 2013, and the standard paperback runs 336 pages with ISBN 9781476746555. That edition is the one to cite for facts, with series Hopeless book two. Hoover writes in plain, direct prose with short chapters and texts that keep pages turning. She is not spare or lyrical here. She is clear, which suits Holder.

I closed it kinder toward Holder than I started, but not fully settled, and I think that is the point. He does not earn a clean slate by feeling bad. He earns a chance by acting different. Listening longer. Asking before touching. Telling truth even when it makes him look bad. Believing Sky without making her pain about his redemption. The final chapters, where he and Sky choose to keep remembering together rather than rushing to be fine, felt honest. Hope as a name and as an idea returns slowly, not as a cure but as a practice. Show up. Tell truth. Stay.

If you read it, do not read it alone if the topics are close to home. Bring a friend like Six, someone who brings food and does not demand a full report. Be that friend for someone else after. That, more than any romance, is what the Hopeless books model best.

A note on craft

Hoover structures Losing Hope in short, dated chapters that alternate present and memory. Present scenes with Sky move forward. Memory scenes with Less and Hope interrupt without warning, the way memory does. That structure helps new readers who did not just finish Hopeless, because key Hopeless events are replayed enough to follow. It hurts rereaders a little, because replay slows momentum.

Dialogue carries much of the book. Holder speaks bluntly, apologizes awkwardly, jokes rarely. Sky teases to test safety. Six teases to break tension. Breckin speaks gently and directly. Hearing the same lunch table jokes from Holder's side shows how much effort he puts into seeming normal. He rehearses lines before saying them. He worries after. That social anxiety under confidence felt true to a grieving teen boy trying to belong.

I might be misremembering small details like the exact order of two school fights, but the emotional order is clear. Fear first, then pursuit, then shame, then listening, then steadier love. Hoover trusts readers to track feelings over timelines. That trust mostly works. When it does not, when a text seems to arrive twice or a run happens on two mornings in a row, forgive the seams. The heart of the book is not police procedural precision. It is a boy learning to carry guilt without passing it to the girl he loves.