33 pages • 1-hour read
Finding Perfect
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Background
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Character Analysis
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Background
Content warning: This section of the guide discusses mental health, pregnancy loss, and emotional trauma.
Series Context: The Hopeless Series
Colleen Hoover is known for creating an interconnected literary universe where characters from different books and series sometimes interact. Finding Perfect serves as a key crossover novella, uniting the worlds of her Hopeless series and her standalone novel All Your Perfects. The author explicitly guides the reader on this, noting that the story “focuses on characters in both Finding Cinderella and All Your Perfects” (vii). The Hopeless series, which includes Hopeless, Losing Hope, and the novella Finding Cinderella, introduces readers to protagonists Sky and Holder, as well as their best friends, Six and Daniel. While Finding Cinderella details the unconventional start to Six and Daniel’s relationship, it leaves their future unresolved. Finding Perfect picks up their story, revealing the long-term emotional consequences of a secret that Six is keeping from Daniel.
The novella’s central conflict can only be resolved through the introduction of Quinn and Graham Wells, the couple at the heart of All Your Perfects. Their novel explores the grief of infertility and their journey to build a family. By weaving these two narratives together, Hoover creates a symbiotic resolution: Quinn and Graham provide a loving home for the baby Daniel and Six conceived. This narrative bridge not only enriches the backstories of well-known characters but also reinforces the themes of fate and interconnectedness that are hallmarks of Hoover’s work.
Cultural Context: Closed Adoption in the United States
The central conflict in Finding Perfect is rooted in the legal and emotional realities of closed adoption, a practice in which an adopted child’s original birth certificate is sealed and non-identifying information is kept confidential. Historically the standard in the United States, this model was designed to protect birth mothers from social stigma and prevent interference in the new family unit. However, research aggregated by institutions like the Donaldson Adoption Institute has highlighted the psychological toll this secrecy can take on birth parents and adoptive children, who often experience unresolved grief and a persistent lack of closure. As a result, closed adoptions have become less frequent and even discouraged in the United States and worldwide (Malinda L. Seymore, “Separation and Connectedness: Global Norms of Open versus Closed Adoptions,” Texas A&M Law Scholarship, 2022). The novella dramatizes this experience for the birth parents, Six and Daniel, and accurately portrays the formidable legal barriers involved in them finding out about their child’s life after the adoption.
The rules of closed adoptions can hamper well-meaning participants. In the novella, Six’s former teacher, Ava, who facilitated the adoption, cannot legally disclose any information, telling Six her “hands are tied” (19) though she wants to ease Six’s mind about the baby. The novella’s resolution, in which the adoptive parents voluntarily initiate contact, reflects a modern shift toward more open forms of adoption. It also underscores the legal reality that in a closed adoption, the power to open lines of communication rests entirely with the adoptive family, leaving birth parents in a state of prolonged and helpless uncertainty.
Genre Context: Coming of Age in New Adult Romance
Finding Perfect is a quintessential example of the New Adult (NA) romance genre, a category of fiction that rose to prominence in the early 2010s. Colleen Hoover is a leading figure in this genre, and her work has done much to shape its themes. Positioned between Young Adult and Adult fiction, the NA genre typically features protagonists aged 18 to 25 who are navigating the transition into adulthood. The characters in Finding Perfect fit this demographic; they are in their “first semesters of college” (2), living away from home for the first time, and grappling with future career paths and the complexities of mature relationships. Daniel’s uncertainty about his major and lack of a job are common tropes that signal his place in this transitional life stage. His emotional immaturity and tendency to make insensitive remarks underscores that he is ill-prepared to take on the complexities of adulthood.
A key convention of the NA genre is its focus on mature, emotionally resonant themes despite the main characters’ inexperience with adult life. While Young Adult romance often centers on first love, NA fiction delves into more complex issues such as mental health, trauma, emotional and sexual abuse, nontraditional relationships, and parenthood. Finding Perfect’s central conflict is a high school junior’s unplanned pregnancy and the subsequent emotional fallout from a closed adoption. Daniel, the protagonist and biological father, is particularly immature, with friends and family members commenting on his lack of sensitivity. The challenge of his character journey is to help his girlfriend and the biological mother, Six, through an extremely sensitive and life-changing situation.
Though New Adult fiction often includes dramatic plot events—sometimes crossing over into thriller, horror, or fantasy territory—it is essentially character-driven. In Finding Perfect, the narrative is driven by the internal, psychological and emotional journeys of Daniel and Six as they confront their shared trauma. The story focuses on emotional healing as the keys to coming of age, showing both characters reach a mature stage of adulthood through openness and shared vulnerability rather than the traditional Western cultural models of stoicism for men and self-denial for women.
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