MEMPHIS READS: REGRETTING YOU: A Novel by Colleen Hoover


Andrea reviews REGRETTING YOU by Colleen Hoover, Montlake Publishing, 2019, 354 pages.

The main theme of the latest story from Colleen Hoover is guilt. Each of the main characters is wrestling with this emotion. Matriarch Morgan Grant is on the cusp of her 34th birthday when she realizes her entire adult life was put on hold for her husband, Chris, and their 17 year old daughter, Clara. She feels guilty because both Chris and Clara are equally the loves of her life and she couldn’t have asked for a better family, but she never got to fulfill her own dreams. It doesn’t matter Morgan has no idea what those dreams were or are now. Clara will be leaving for college next year so Morgan will her own chance to shine soon.

Suddenly, Morgan’s life is turned upside down when Chris and her younger sister, Jenny are in a fatal car accident. Jenny left behind a fiancé’, Jonah, and their infant son, Elijah. Jonah is also feeling guilty since he moved across the country after his own dad died and abandoned his three closest friends.  But when Morgan and Jonah put the facts together why exactly Chris and Jenny were together in the car and where they were, it, of course, devastates them to the core. The two are struggling whether Morgan should protect Clara about the infidelity or Jonah should tell Elijah that Chris was actually his biological father.

Clara is also feeling guilty because she knows she was texting her aunt Jenny when the accident happened. All of the laws about no texting and driving didn’t seem to apply to her because she had to tell her closest confidante about her new boyfriend, Miller Adams.

I think I was most bothered that Chris and Jenny didn’t seem to feel guilty about their affair that had been going on for over a decade.

There is plenty of realistic, raw emotion in this novel. Death is something the living can’t cope easily with, and it even can sometimes cause unnecessary guilt.  Whether feelings come after you experience devastation are okay because they are yours to own. Believe me.