November 9 by Colleen Hoover Review

November 9 was less emotional for me than I'm sure it was intended to be due to its sheer absurdity, but it was overall decently entertaining. For context, It Ends with Us also by Colleen Hoover was my favorite book when I was 14, far before any Colleen Hoover hype hit the internet and her work saturated the market. I've attempted to return to her work after its explosive manner as of late, by reading this book, Ugly Love, and Confess, but none of them has had nearly the same effect it had on me as It Ends with Us all those years ago. I am afraid to reread It Ends with Us after hearing how underwhelming it is from current, more mature readers, as well due to as my personal reaction to her other works now that I am older. 

November 9 was ultimately another disappointment to add to the collection of mediocre at best Colleen Hoover novels I have consumed. Her narrative voice and writing style tend to come off as a bit juvenile to me, and her over exaggerated plot twists and unrealistic plot lines don’t appeal to me as much as they used to. November 9 was more Young Adult genre-esque than I had expected, so it was even more juvenile in nature than her other works. Fallon and Ben are neither charming nor do they make any sort of logical decisions. The reader has to suspend disbelief to a large degree in order to take away any pleasure from this novel, as there are many instances that would never occur, such as their meeting in a diner and Ben's "smooth" entrance into Fallon's life in the present. If I were to discuss Ben's various comments and thoughts from his part of the dual POV, we would be here all day, he has much to say about Fallon's physical features. I'd be one of many who read this and felt negatively about Hoover's depiction of male gaze as something to be desired. But he did not seem to have insidious intentions, so maybe his strange and objectifying teenage boy thoughts he has about Fallon were the most realistic parts of the story. 

I will admit, despite the many bumps and edges in this work that are far from smoothed out, like in much of Hoover's writing and plots, this novel was very creative, and the plot twist was unexpected to me. I also liked a lot of the themes and ideas discussed in this book, such as Fallon's relationship with her father and Ben's encouragement for her to reconnect with him, as well as how they meet up every year, no matter how illogical that course of action was. I'm a romantic at heart, so I liked that aspect. I can see this being a guilty pleasure sort of novel to a romance fanatic, or something a younger girl who is just getting into romance novels would enjoy.