5.5 stars 
 Colleen Hoover is the queen of making me gut laugh, turn the page, and find my guts spilled all over the floor. Ok, maybe not literally, but the emotional evisceration of her characters so close on the heels of humor is like nothing I've read from any other author. No one makes me feel such opposing feelings at the same time like Colleen Hoover. She writes emotional situations with perfection. I found myself laughing out loud at the characters' antics and on the next page I'd be on the brink of tears. Her writing is engaging and entertaining in a way that makes it difficult to put her books down once I've started reading. 
 Ridge. I don't even know what to say about him without revealing too much. He may be my favorite Colleen Hoover man yet. I liked him early on, while he and Sydney were only talking via text and hadn't even stood in the same room. He has a character trait that I would never have guessed from the teasers or the blurb that is done so perfectly. It is treated with great sensitivity in that it doesn't define him, though it does make for a few communication challenges with Sydney.It's just a part of who he is. He is a musician, writing songs for his brother's band while he works from home. 
 Reading Sydney's story for a while felt like I was on a wild ride. She's happy, then she's reeling, then she's building things back together, then she's reeling again. When she finds out her boyfriend has been cheating on her with her roommate, she is lost. Her independent streak, while admirable, in this case ends up getting her soaked. But while she is fiercely independent, she is also caring, 
 Together, I wanted to root for them, but didn't want them together at the same time. Sydney and Ridge are fighting a hard fought battle through the course of Maybe Someday. They are so perfect together. They can work together on music and fill in gaps where the other get stuck. They laugh, they protect, they connect. But so much about their situation just can't work as they find it. And that hurt to read. At one point I made a note about doing what's right hurting so much it feels wrong because they do fight it so hard. I kept asking myself why they would have to be fighting so hard when it would be easy to fix the major roadblock to their relationship, but when we learned why it wasn't really an easy fix I was breaking all over again. 
 There is so much symbolism in the connection between song, story, and senses. Having the soundtrack isn't a requirement for reading the book. It's not even a requirement for enjoying the book. But together the two make the experience more. More emotional. More conflicting. More honest. More. I hadn't planned on buying the soundtrack while I read the book because I wanted to be able to talk about the book by itself, but knowing it was available and out there was too much temptation and I ended up buying it when I was halfway through the book. Going back to the scenes where Ridge and Sydney were actually writing and listening to the songs while re-reading changed the reading experience more than I anticipated. I should have known based on experiences with other books and being able to YouTube unfamiliar songs, but knowing Griffin's album was written specifically for this book, and that the lyrics referenced in the story are the real lyrics in the songs made it a sensory experience. But I also refused to listen to each new song until I reached it's reference in the book to keep the story a surprise, because the subtext in each song really does tie in with where Sydney and Ridge are and what they are feeling. To me, that was the best compromise between having the soundtrack as background music, and having the music give me spoilers, or even extra impetus to keep reading. 
 Maybe Someday is maybe a book I would not have picked up if I knew more about the plot points. It has two plot aspects that normally turn me off to a book, or at least make me cringe while reading, but I never felt those negative feelings here. Not knowing those things before I fell in love with Ridge and Sydney in the chapter teaser that was released before I had the book in my hands, I was caught up in those two. This was not an easy book for me to keep reading in the first few chapters. But I am so glad I did. It was one of those stories where we needed those challenges for what these two find to mean everything. This will be one of my favorite books for the year, of that I'm sure. 
 Thanks to Colleen Hoover and Atria for providing me with a galley copy for review.