{Audiobook} Review: Finding Cinderella by Colleen Hoover

Title: Finding Cinderella
Author: Colleen Hoover
Narrator: Jason Carpenter
Series: Hopeless, book #2.5
Length: 4 hrs 2 mins
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date: July 8, 2014
Source: from publisher
Purchase: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Audible

This novella is a companion novel to the Hopeless series, but can be read as a standalone.

A chance encounter in the dark leads eighteen-year-old Daniel and the girl who stumbles across him to profess their love for each other. But this love comes with conditions: they agree it will only last one hour and it will only be make-believe.

When their hour is up and the girl rushes off like Cinderella, Daniel tries to convince himself that what happened between them only seemed perfect because they were pretending it was perfect. Moments like that with girls like her don’t happen outside of fairytales.

One year and one bad relationship later, his disbelief in insta-love is stripped away the day he meets Six: a girl with a strange name and an even stranger personality. Daniel soon realizes the way he pretended to feel about Cinderella and the way he really feels about Six may not be so different after all. Especially when the two loves of his life end up being one in the same.

Unfortunately for Daniel, finding Cinderella doesn’t guarantee their happily ever after…it only further threatens it.

I loved Daniel's character in Losing Hope.  I thought he provided much needed comedic relief during some really trying times for Holder. And I knew that I had to read more of his story, especially after he revealed some sketchy details about the closet incident.

Who knew Daniel would end up being such a romantic guy, though? He's not perfect, but he's still pretty awesome as a love interest. I thought it would be difficult for Hoover to make me like him as much as I liked Holder's character, but she did a fantastic job of laying Daniel bare and proving that he was just as worthy of his own story as Holder was.

I wasn't expecting such an emotionally-charged story, especially considering it's a story about Daniel and Six, who didn't seem to be overly emotive in either of the previous books. I was simply expecting to find out who the girl in the closet was. To find out what Six was up to while she was away in Italy. And I got my answers to those questions plus a whole lot more.

Jason Carpenter narrates this story, and I couldn't think of a more perfect narrator to voice the charismatic Daniel...except maybe MacLeod Andrews, but he is one of my favorites, so I'm a little biased. I don't think I've listened to anything narrated by Jason Carpenter before, but I think it was Nereyda who mentioned that she thought Jason Carpenter and Deacon Lee were one and the same. And I can totally see that, since Carpenter went with a bit of a Southern twang when he was voicing Holder and he sounded just like Ben in Five Ways to Fall. I don't care if he's using a pseudonym or not, he did a fantastic job of bringing Daniel to life...just thinking of that bit where Six meets the parents still has me cracking up.

I definitely recommend this novella if you're already a fan of Hoover's, though I do recommend reading the first two books in the series first, since Finding Cinderella felt like a big inside joke that the author was finally letting us in on.  And I mean that in the best possible way.

GIF it to me straight:

the Hopeless books

 

About the author:

Colleen Hoover is the New York Times bestselling author of Slammed, Point of Retreat, Hopeless, and This Girl. Colleen lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys.

Find Colleen:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

Labels: all the feels, all the swoons, audiobooks, colleen hoover, contemporary, favorites, novellas, reviews, simon schuster