Losing Hope

“I realize that the very best part of me is dead.”

Holder sees Les, being his twin sister, as a part of him. When he finds her body after she dies by suicide, he is at his lowest point of the novel. Beginning the story with Holder having lost all hope allows Sky’s emergence in his life to make a powerful difference, epitomizing the fact that the novel traces his character development.

“I’m so sorry I let you down. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see what was really going on behind your eyes every time you told me you were fine.”

Holder writes these words in a letter to Les when he finds a notebook on her bedroom floor the morning of her funeral. Holder always sensed that Les carried emotional pain that she kept from him, and this first mention of it foreshadows the end of the novel when he finds out that she was molested by Hope’s father.

“I try to think of when the thoughts finally stopped, but I’m not so sure they have. I still think about her more than I should. It’s been years now, but every time I look up at the sky I think about her.”

Hope’s disappearance haunts Holder’s life, and even 13 years later, the loss still affects him, compounding the grief he feels when his sister dies. This imagery of “sky” foreshadows Sky’s arrival into his life; he mentions sky often in his memories of Hope, who chooses the name “Sky” once Karen takes her from her father because it reminds her of the safety that she felt with Holder when they were children.

“I guess they’re getting their wish after all. I’m breaking down. / I’m losing it. / And I don’t really give a fuck.”

This moment shows Holder out of control and beating another high school student so brutally that he ends up deaf in one ear. The quotation lands on monosyllabic cursing—“I don’t give…a fuck”—which suggests that his power of self-expression is vacant at this point; Holder sees violence as his only expressive outlet. Throughout the novel, Holder’s self-control in moments of anger and pain develops to the point that he is able to walk away from a fight.

“I don’t want to forget that my inability to protect either of you is why I’m the only one of us left. I deserve to be reminded every second that I’m alive that I let both of you down, so that I can be conscious not to let myself ever do this again to anyone else.”

At the beginning of the novel, Holder is so bereft that he gets a tattoo to remind him that he is to blame for the fates of Hope and Les. This symbol embodies his character development, as he becomes less hopeless and changed his sense of what he “deserve[s]” as the novel continues.

“I know she’s not Hope. She proved she wasn’t Hope. / So why is my gut instinct telling me to stop her?”

Holder has been looking for Hope since he was eight years old and senses instinctually that Sky is her, though reason tells him that it’s not. He fights this back and forth feeling throughout the first half of the book until realizing, upon seeing the bracelet that Les gave her, that she truly is Hope. The question he presents to himself is also a question that Hoover prompts the reader to ask to build suspense.

“My point is that I don’t. I don’t feel any of that. When I make out with guys, I don’t feel anything at all. Just numbness. So sometimes I let Grayson do what he does to me, not because I enjoy it, but because I like not feeling anything at all.”

This speaks to the theme of Healing from Childhood Trauma as Sky experiences the effects of her trauma without knowing why because she has blocked all of it out. Her unique attraction to Holder singles him out as someone special to her.

“I need to know for sure that you’re feeling every single thing that I’m feeling the moment my lips touch yours. Because I want your first kiss to be the best kiss in the history of first kisses.”

In response to Sky’s elusiveness, Holder wants proof that their first kiss is special, holding off on kissing her until she trusts him. His histrionic speech—“best kiss in the history of first kisses”—draws attention to his youth amid adult themes.

“I can’t kiss you tonight because kissing leads to the next thing, which leads to the next thing and at the rate we’re going we’ll be all out of firsts by next weekend. Don’t you want to drag our firsts out a little longer?”

Though this novel covers heavy subjects such as sexual abuse and death by suicide, there are times that it is an innocent love story as well. Here, Hoover provides light relief as Holder revels in the dynamics of their new relationship, wanting to savor each new situation they experience together.

“I don’t think my chest has been empty this whole time like I thought. Whatever is left inside me has just been asleep, and she's somehow slowly waking it up.”

At the beginning of the novel, Holder gets a tattoo that says, “Hopeless.” Once he finds love with Sky, he begins to feel hope again. This instance is the first time that he acknowledges her power over him in this way, speaking to the themes of Fated Love in Uncertain Times and Hoover presents the pair as complements to each other.

“Please, just let her be Sky.”

Despite looking for and grieving Hope for 13 years, Holder knows that if Sky is really Hope, her life will be destroyed. Here, he sacrifices his wish for Hope’s return so that Sky can remain content in her life, contradicting his earlier wishes. However, this passage has a double meaning; by wishing for her to remain “Sky,” he is also wishing for her to continue to represent something simple and safe.

“I grip the back of my neck in order to keep my hands busy so that I don’t punch the table. / She’s Hope. Sky is Hope and Hope is Sky and, ‘Shit!’”

Speaking to the theme of The Relationship Between Trauma and Violence, Holder’s emotions often get the best of him, causing him to become violent. Feeling powerful emotion and wanting to react physically, Sky’s presence in this moment is enough to hold Holder back from violence. However, he does not yet have the power of self-expression, again only being able to utter a monosyllabic curse word.

“I used to tell her to think about the sky when she got sad and she always promised me she would. Now here she is. And her name is Sky.”

Throughout the book, the image of the sky—its largeness compared to the characters’ smallness—connects to the love that Holder and Sky have for one another in the face of their childhood traumas.

“I walked away from her thirteen years ago and ruined her life. Now if I decide not to walk away from her, I’ll ruin her life again. / Just goes to show that everything I do is hopeless. Fucking hopeless.”

This refers to Holder’s “Hopeless” tattoo and the guilt that he holds for not protecting Hope when they were children and Les when they were older. And now, in his current predicament, he is stuck, unable to be with Sky and unable to be without her, articulating the central conflict in the novel.

“I frantically flip through the pages covered in Les’s handwriting until I find where the words begin. As soon as I see the first words written on top of the page, my heart comes to a screeching halt.”

Letters to Les form many of the chapters in Losing Hope. After writing letters to Les for months, Holder finds a suicide letter to him from his sister in the back of the book and refuses to read it. This letter, later, forms the denouement as it recounts Les’s abuse at the hands of Hope’s father.

“And that’s what I do. I run. I run straight to Sky’s house because she’s the only thing in the world that can help me breathe again.”

Running, a motif in the novel, serves as an outlet for Holder to deal with his strong emotions. Sky, too, is a runner, and both characters run in part to escape the traumas in their pasts or move towards something that will help them to heal.

“I know I told her that she’s never really been kissed before, but until this moment I had no idea that I had never really been kissed before. Not like this. Every kiss, every movement, every moan, every touch of her hand against my skin. She’s my saving grace. My Hope. / And I’m never walking away from her again.”

Further illuminating the theme of Fated Love in Uncertain Times, this passage provides a climactic romantic moment that is ironically less sexual than Sky and Holder’s previous encounters. Hoover suggests that their kiss is more intimate as it ties physicality with self-expression.

“‘I live you, Sky,’ I say against her lips. ‘I live you so much.’ / And as perfect as that word sounds, as perfectly as it describes the point we’re at, I know it’s a lie. / I don’t just live her. I love her. I’ve loved her since we were kids.”

Following two weeks apart, this conversation takes place when Holder sneaks into Sky’s room after finding the suicide letter from his sister. Both in emotional pain, the idea of Holder and Sky “living” one another speaks to the theme of Healing from Childhood Trauma as through one another, they are able to “live” with their pain and get through it.

“As soon as I’m pressed against her I’m hit with the revelation that I’ve never experienced or felt anything like her in my life. This is how it should be when people pass this first. This is exactly how it should feel and it’s incredible.”

This passage reflects both the emotional and sexual connection that Holder and Sky share. Holder, whom Hoover presents as a physical being, senses in his body that Sky is the one for him when they are physically intimate.

“She completely checked out and she doesn’t even remember doing it.”

As this novel deals with the impacts of sexual abuse, Sky’s moments of dissociation serve as foreshadowing, giving signals early on that some type of abuse may have happened when she was younger. Later, when she dissociates the first time her and Holder are to have sex, it becomes clear that the abuse was sexual in nature.

“She keeps looking at the picture, then back up to me and I just want to grab the frame and throw it across the fucking room and pull her out of here, but I have a feeling it’s too late.’”

Here, Sky finally realizes upon seeing this photo that Holder is her childhood neighbor. Her memories start to come back to her, leading to her later realization that her father molested her. This dramatic moment anticipates the imminent climax of her confrontation with her father.

“‘I need a chapter break,’ she says, continuing to walk away.”

Sky needs space to work out her feelings once her childhood memories start to return. This subchapter’s title, too, plays with this idea of a “chapter break” as it puts three chapters’ worth of emotion and turmoil into one chapter. Holder’s letters to Les also break up the novel’s narrative throughout, serving as “chapter breaks” for him, too.

“‘Holder,’ she interrupts. ‘You were just a little boy.’”

Sky attempts to help Holder see that he is not to blame for her kidnapping or her father’s actions speak. She understands that his trauma response lies in his feelings of inadequacy in relation to protecting those he loves. Her words exemplify Hoover’s message of Healing from Childhood Trauma through the help of loved ones.