Feels: A wave of emotions that sometimes cannot be adequately explained

Apparently using “feels” this way has been around for at least a couple years. It only entered my vocabulary as part of the John Green/Fault in our Stars phenomenon. The book and film brought on an enormous amount of feels to many, myself included.

To me, the feels are good things. The feels means something is extraordinary. I love things that bring on the feels.

Giving people the feels is something I aspired to, but it seemed meant more for the John Greens and David Levithans of the world.

So, I had feels of my own this week when the word cropped up twice in reference to the Hat Trick books.

The first came on Monday via a Twitter DM from a follower who’d finished Hat Trick 2: “Oh man… boom.. right in the feels once more at the end!”

The second was in a five-star review of Hat Trick from Dallas Vinson on Goodreads: “ I thought this was going to be an easy sailing romantic story until everything took a very sudden turn and Jeff managed to rip my feels to shreds. Then managed to do it a couple more times before the book ended.”

Maybe I’m making too much out of these comments, but I’m very happy that I was able to craft a story that had that impact on readers. Now I just need to keep doing it… and doing it even better.