Before picking up this book, I hadn't read anything by this author. I knew that she self-published, and I knew that most of her stuff had very high ratings on Goodreads. I have to be in the right mood to start anything in the New Adult genre though (mostly because of how heavy the angst is throughout every single time), and I was still getting over the emotional trauma of The Sea of Tranquility, another story dealing with tough subjects that I enjoyed immensely. Hopeless is actually kind of similar to it in a few ways - in both, the main characters are dealing with awful things in their past, have suppressed memories to the point of amnesia, and love to run. Though I think I prefer tSoT, I'm still glad I picked up Hopeless, despite the rocky start I had with it at first. 
 I came very close to dropping this about fifty pages in. I couldn't believe the stupidity of the main character, Sky. Admittedly, she often says she knows how dumb she is being, so I was glad she wasn't completely ignorant about her decisions. When she meets a stranger in a grocery store (a gorgeous one, of course), he glares at her and then follows her out into the parking lot, demanding to know her name. Personally, I think I would have been sufficiently creeped out at the point and sped away in my car. Sky, however, does tell him her name, but that's not all. She shows him her ID - which, as we all know, has a lot of useful information on it. When you meet creepy strangers, perhaps you shouldn't show them that type oft thing. When Sky finally does drive away, she looks in the rearview mirror she sees him punching something, so obviously he has a temper. After that, she runs into him while she's jogging and he rattles off her address (because he has an awesome memory) and also admits to looking her up on Facebook almost immediately after they met. He then runs into his house to get Sky a new bottle of water to drink on her way back home . . . it's not like he could have drugged it or anything. I realize that this guy is supposed to be incredibly hot, but at the same time, if those things happened to me I would seriously be worried I had a stalker. 
 The main reason I decided to keep reading despite this disturbing series of events was because I really liked the writing and it had already made me laugh a couple times - Sky's best friend, Six, was pretty awesome. I was also pretty curious about why Sky seemed so numb when it came to being physical with any guy. Once you get past the creepiness of the initial meeting between Holder and Sky (I find it very strange that she never asked him once why he preferred to go buy his last name instead of his first), they were actually pretty cute together. Most of the rumors surrounding him turn out to be untrue; of course they fall in love, and that's a very lucky thing for Sky, because if her love interest did turn out to be crazy, she definitely would have died or disappeared at some point in this book. She willingly lets him int the house and tells him that she's alone all weekend before he tells her about the rumors. 
 As the plot unfolds, the reason for Holder's bizarre actions make a lot more sense than they did in the beginning, and if nothing else I have to say that Hopeless was a very addicting read. I was very interested in the cryptic mysteries surrounding both characters, and I liked how supportive and comforting they were towards each other. The text messages and the way they talked was very cute. Once in a while it did border on cheesy, but I was enjoying it so much I didn't really care. I would recommend giving this book a chance, but I can't really blame anyone for being put off by the beginning. However, once you get to the meat of the story everything works much better than it appears to at first. The confrontational scenes were very moving, and it ended, ironically, on a rather hopeful note. I also really liked the explanation behind Holder's tattoo on his arm, bearing the same word as the title. 
 3.5 stars