The Voss family is anything but normal. They live in a repurposed church, newly baptized Dollar Voss. The once cancer-stricken mother lives in the basement, the father is married to the mother’s former nurse, the little half-brother isn’t allowed to do or eat anything fun, and the eldest siblings are irritatingly perfect. Then, there’s Merit.

Merit Voss collects trophies she hasn’t earned and secrets her family forces her to keep. While browsing the local antiques shop for her next trophy, she finds Sagan. His wit and unapologetic idealism disarm and spark renewed life into her—until she discovers that he’s completely unavailable. Merit retreats deeper into herself, watching her family from the sidelines, when she learns a secret that no trophy in the world can fix.

Fed up with the lies, Merit decides to shatter the happy family illusion that she’s never been a part of before leaving them behind for good. When her escape plan fails, Merit is forced to deal with the staggering consequences of telling the truth and losing the one boy she loves.

Poignant and powerful, WITHOUT MERIT explores the layers of lies that tie a family together and the power of love.

“Not every mistake deserves a consequence. Sometimes the only thing a mistake deserves is forgiveness.”

Merit seems like your typical teenager but she is slowly losing interests in things and one night tries to end it all but things don’t go according to plan. Like the old saying goes “everything happens for a reason” and this was actually a good thing. Lots of things get revealed that had me shocked but more importantly relationships are rebuilt along with forgiveness and understanding.

“It annoys me when people try to convince other people that their anger or stress isn’t warranted if someone else in the world is worse off than them. Your emotions and reactions are valid.  Don’t let anyone tell you any different. You’re the only one who feels them.”

This was such a thought provoking story and I devoured it in one sitting. This book put a lot of things in perspective in this thing called life.  This book also teaches us about being judgmental over situations just because we don’t understand why a person is doing what they are doing. Maybe if we took a step back and stopped judging and listened relationships between people could be better. This book was different than I expected from Colleen Hoover but it didn’t disappoint me because I was able to do some of my own reflection while reading. I loved how Hoover chose to right a book that deals with mental health illness. Everyone wants to be normal but what is normal? This book lets you know it’s okay to not be okay.

4 1/2 Book Corner Stars 
*ARC Review*

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