Touching on secrets, loss, hope and great love, Colleen Hoover’s latest novel, REGRETTING YOU, often hovers somewhere between a romance and a tidy domestic. But because it comes to its conclusion through suffering, it cannot quite be described as either. Morgan and Clara Grant are a typical mother and daughter until a horrific accident and the truths it reveals threaten their relationship and force them to question all they know.

Things were already changing for Morgan and her 16-year-old daughter, Clara. Morgan’s sister, Jenny, recently gave birth to a son, Elijah, after reconnecting with her high school boyfriend, Jonah. Jonah moved back to their hometown to be with Jenny and the baby, and the couple was engaged to be married. Clara had just begun an intense flirtation with the creative and sweet Miller Adams, a boy her father Chris doesn’t want her to see, but one who Jonah, newly hired as a teacher at the high school, thinks highly of. Thinking ahead to when Clara goes off to college, Morgan is considering returning to finish her own degree, which was interrupted when caring for her daughter became a full-time job.

"There may not be any major revelations about love and loss in these pages, but Hoover still has crafted an enjoyable yet poignant examination of some of the joys and challenges of life."

But just as all this possibility is blooming, and a day after Morgan’s 34th birthday, Jenny and Chris are in a fatal car accident. When Morgan and Jonah arrive at the hospital, it quickly becomes apparent that there was something between Chris and Jenny. The truth of their long affair creates more pain for Morgan and Jonah, even as they mourn the loss of their partners. And it brings into sharp relief the complicated history of the four friends. Keeping the truth from Clara, who idolized her father and her aunt, makes things even more difficult.

Clara’s own grief has brought her closer to Miller, the boy her father wanted her to avoid. He proves to be a kind and loving boyfriend, but Clara, in extreme emotional pain, keeps testing her own boundaries as well as her mother’s rules and patience, often pushing Miller in uncomfortable ways. Their relationship mirrors both Morgan’s with Chris over the past 17 years and her relationship with Jonah as it changes in the aftermath of the accident. Hoover does a nice job presenting these parallels without hitting readers over the head with them.

Overall, REGRETTING YOU is well paced and compelling. The only real surprise comes early on, so characters (and readers) are in response mode for much of the book. The reactions of Morgan, Clara and Jonah mostly feel real, though the drama is sometimes a bit idealized, even inching close to saccharine, and the story is quite neatly resolved by the end. Hoover’s background as a writer of romance novels shines through with her scenes, both physical and emotional, between characters falling in and out of love.

There may not be any major revelations about love and loss in these pages, but Hoover still has crafted an enjoyable yet poignant examination of some of the joys and challenges of life.