And we’re back to Colleen Hoover.
The good news is I couldn’t hold my excitement seeing the book cover (Reminders of Him by Colleen Hoover) so I already read it, unlike the other reviews where I publish my thoughts in the middle of reading those.
In a nutshell – This is the peak of Colleen Hoover; this is what made her so popular. This is not like those lovey-dovey novels that look straight up from Wattpad. People should read this if they want to go through CoHo’s mind.
Okay, I get it. Tragic love stories are not for everyone, but that’s the whole point of these approaches to literature. The story is about losing your love and then gaining it back, yet not entirely.
So, welcome to the part where I actually appreciate some of the Hooverse. For the first time, we are not getting weird relationships between step-siblings or some guy gaslighting the protagonist for years.
Instead, you are not getting abusive relationships but mature and well-thought-out relationships. You’ll find my heavily opinionated judgment on each of the Reminders of Him characters that I thought were deserving – you decide if it’s gonna be worth your time.
For the new readers and for CoHo’s best pieces, go for this one. But, before that read this Reminders of Him summary for the exquisite taste.
Synopsis of Reminders of Him: These Back-Stories are What I Wanted in a Hooverse
C’mon, a coquette petite girl who doesn’t know how beautiful she is or that the mafia is in love with her is a gone-gone backstory – we’re not reading that in 2024 anymore. (unless emergency emotional support, duh).
The beginning
We get our rough-and-tough female protagonist, Kenna, who is currently on probation or jail right now for involuntary manslaughter and just got out of prison as we speak. Her story was interesting because that’s not something I would expect Colleen Hoover to write – that’s some Agatha Christie shit.
Kenna and the love of her life, Scotty, were driving to a place after a party (or an event), and they were heavily drunk and high. Now, kids, we know drinking and driving is a massive no-no from our side, but remember that we are in a Hooverse right now. Things won’t make sense.
Kenna was driving, and Scott was the one who could legally have fun. Because, you know, drinking and not driving. CoHo is way too predictable, so I knew what would happen, and the plot was – who will make the sacrifice for the plot?
Females are usually tortured, need-for-protection characters in CoHo’s story, but like I said, this one’s just different.
Yeah, Scotty dies.
I feel bad for Scotty
It would have been easier if he was just dead on the spot. But he wasn’t. Kenna just decided that he was dead. Just her intuition kicking in.
The car crashed and got into a life-threatening accident. Kenna got out of the car without Scott, as she thought he was immediately.
She didn’t even bother calling anyone for help and went straight to her home. I guess someone reported the accident to the police, and there we were, Kenna, going to jail for involuntary manslaughter because you know what?
Scotty was alive the whole moment. He died because she thought he had died and didn’t call for help. He patiently died waiting in the car, watching the love of his life letting him rot in the car.
Police arrested our protagonist, and she is now behind bars because at least she gets what she has done and feels guilty enough not to defend herself in court.
Wish that was the end of the plot, but surprise – Kenna found out she was pregnant right before and gave birth while serving in prison.
Scotty’s parents, the kid’s paternal grandparents, took responsibility for their grandchild, and Kenna lost custody. If that was not enough, they got a restraining order against Kenna. Hate is less of a word – they abhor her.
Oh, and she named her daughter ‘Diem’ after ‘Carpe Diem’. Um, yeah.
Ledger Ward – Ray of Hope
The ex-con is out there, and her only mission in life is to meet and see her daughter. Until she met another stranger in the middle of the journey who felt like love – Ledger Ward.
A very good-looking man who doesn’t judge Kenna based on her past and only likes her who she is.
That’s because he doesn’t know who she really is – the alleged murderer of her best friend.
Meet Ledger – best friend to Scotty, a family friend to Scotty’s family, and a dear uncle to Diem.
This guy is heavily involved in the daughter’s life, so Kenna has no scope to get on board with him or even think about him in a slightly romantic way. He is everything she could ask for and everything she couldn’t have.
Sucks to be her, honestly.
I’m judging Kenna so hard
Okay, girlboss has been suffering in silence, so I gotta sympathize with her, but oh my God, this girl has literally zero shame.
When in prison, she kept whining about how she hadn’t slept with anybody or been in anybody for the longest time or hadn’t had the touch of love to the point of getting tacky.
Girl, this is all your fault. And then we got to know that she was actually having an affair with a prison guard. My girl was shooting her shot wherever she could.
Also, that’s a violation of law, so the prison guard had to switch branches. Then, when she got out of prison, she tried to get herself a job through a mutual friend who was a huge fan of ‘Orange is the New Black.’ That girl only gave her the job to verify all the facts shown in that series.
As they say, birds of the same flocks fly together.
I honestly think CoHo just finished ‘Orange is the New Black’ and thought, Hmph, how cool it would be if one of them came out of prison and none was gay?
By the quality of your content, ma’am, it’s not so good.
I’m not gonna leave Ledger alone, too – he gave me the biggest of all times.
Remember how Kenna straight-up went to the bar after her release, and Ledger noticed her. He specifically complimented (in his mind) how hot she was, and he got to get with her as soon as possible.
At the end of the book, when they (Spoiler alert) kind of got together, he casually slips in about how he’s so supportive of feminism. He believes that complimenting on appearance damages women’s self-worth.
Okay, pick me, guy. Hope you get picked soon.
5 years of anger just go away after reading a letter
Man, I’d be pressed if I was Scotty.
Scotty’s whole family is super pissed with Kenna for murdering their son (obviously), but you know what calms down their anger and all of the emotions that were buried all these years? A letter. A freakin’ letter.
The backstory of these letters is that Kenna used to write letters to Scotty after he died.
She used to rant and tell him how guilty she was and how she wanted to do and could have done so much for him. She’s basically gaslighting a dead person into thinking that she didn’t let him die and romanticizing it as much as she can.
She brought up the one that she wrote right after he was announced dead, expressing all her emotions at that moment. Kenna was misunderstood a lot at this point because all of the people were mad at her for not defending herself in court.
But she simply did it because she thought she deserved all those punishments, not because she couldn’t care less. She wrote that in the letter, and Scotty’s family finally got the whole picture.
She actually loved Scotty. That’s not something I’d made fun of. The real thing that deserves the bullying it’s getting is the unhinged poems she thinks are so great. Hold up, I’ll show you one from her book because I shouldn’t be blessed with this writing piece all on my own.
‘I have a daughter I never held.
She has a scent I never smelled,
She has a name I never yelled
She has a mother who has already failed.’
…I cannot with the last line; I’m fighting tears. Tears of laughter.
I don’t know how that got Ledger and the whole family weeping for Kenna after not weeping for 5 years, but yes, that’s the story. She finally reunited with her daughter and found a man willing to do anything for both of them.
Reminders of Him Characters Analysis & Plot Might Have Just Gotten Out of Hands
I have already expressed my love and hate relationship with the main character – Kenna Rowan. I thought this was going to be different. A bad one, but different.
I hate how CoHo’s every character is defined only by their trauma. It’s almost like I don’t know that girl besides her trauma. I know she has a quest to find her daughter, take her back, and redeem her mistakes.
As someone with common sense, I would 100% support a mother taking her daughter in the right context. But is that mother actually good for that daughter??
I cannot judge. Because I don’t know what Kenna Rowan is like. We do not know her.
The writer only tells her what happens to the character and how they react to that or something very bland. She tells us rather than showing us. I know she’s a tough person, but I don’t know how she’s a tough person. That’s something that I have always disliked about CoHo’s books.
I cannot call this a novel. This is the delusional story that you make up in your head to help you fall asleep. That’s why you don’t actually get to know the characters, apart from their traumas.
Trauma seems to have a good connection with everything. Did you notice how most of the (read all of the) CoHo characters have zero to no female friends?
They are always the odd one out and are too nice to be liked by other females. I didn’t like the girls-hate-girls pitch she was going for – especially with Ledger’s ex-fiance.
That calls for the next victim of my strongly opinionated analysis – Ledger Ward. I cannot bitch about him much because, honestly, he’s better than most of the characters in the Hooverse. The others are physically abusing and gaslighting the protagonists. The bar is in Hell, so I’ll let him get away with it.
I don’t think he helped Kenna because he was nice. He just thought she was hot and only did this so that he could give her the benefit of the doubt to avail promotions later on (yes, marriage).
Also, their story doesn’t make sense because why would you not recognize the murderer of your best friend? Did you not visit the trials, or have you not seen the face of the woman that you claim to hate all these years?
This character was just made to get on people’s nerves. But not as much – he’s at least not abusive and a self-claimed feminist icon (The Bar is in Hell).
Final Thoughts
I loved and hated each character, which you can tell by my brutal Reminders of Him characters analysis. Some loopholes needed work, but we will let that slide because CoHo doesn’t care much about story building.
This story was different, but I wish she had put a little effort into the character building because this could build a super-intense world with complex characters. But guess we are getting the delusional-before-sleeping content anyway.
In a nutshell – Scotty’s been the real victim. Rest in Peace.