Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - It Ends with Us

Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

557 reviews

jg34's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

A bit conflicted on this one. This book covers a very sensitive subject that is hard to write in a way that is true to real experience but doesn’t glorify it or portray it in a harmful light. Colleen Hoover did well at this and had the best of intentions as explained in her authors note. However there are a few things I found issue with.

First, what was done well. This did a great job to show why it is difficult to leave an abusive situation. The main couple in this had a beautiful love story - until it wasn’t. As a reader on the outside of a fictional relationship even I could see why they stayed together so long even though logically I knew they shouldn’t. We were given hope that the abuse would stop and it was just a one off. We were shown how abusers can be otherwise wonderful people loved by many. How you don’t know what goes on in an otherwise perfect looking relationship. How easy it is to perpetuate the cycle of abuse even if you grew up in it. How manipulative abusers can be. How the family of abusers can help or hinder recovery. How alone abuse victims feel. How hard it is to escape even after you have accepted that you need to leave. All those points are important and I think were portrayed well and hopefully offer insight to those who have never found themselves in an abusive relationship.

Of course one story will not be representative of the whole and while I don’t think Colleen Hoover has a responsibility to show every single obstacle that can happen, there were some big ones missed: the victim was supported (mostly) by the abusers family. The victim had a place to go when she needed to leave. She had a lot of autonomy still (had her own job, car, bank accounts, etc.). The abuser actually (eventually) backed off and left her alone and let the reconciliation be on her terms. The victim also had another love interest to conveniently fall back on once this relationship ended. There are all things that many abuse victims do not have. Not to say that this wasn’t a horrible and very hard situation as it was! Readers should understand that the struggles portrayed in this book are most definitely not the only that victims have to overcome, particularly taking into account their financial/social situation. Those in poverty - like as portrayed a little bit with Atlas - have a few thousand more hurdles to jump over.

A few other issues some may consider about the book as a whole: is it harmful to make a ROMANCE novel about abuse? Did the author put the abuser in too good of a light where readers could sympathize with him and apply that to their actual relationships thinking “it’s not that bad” or “they are a good person who sometimes does bad things”? This is subjective but I understand the harm it could cause.

My last critique is maybe just a me thing but it has to do with

the pregnancy. I was shocked that termination or even adoption was never ever considered or mentioned? It was like it wasn’t even an option. Obviously pro choice here but how was that not even explored, the fact that not a single character (NOT THE DOCTORS????) brought it up is baffling to me, I found that hard to brush over. The victim is young and just getting out of an abusive relationship and in a questionable financial position (she said she had no idea how well her store is doing, her bf bought her apartment for her, now she is possibly going to be a homeless single mom??) which sounds like an awful situation to throw a baby into the mix. SECOND, this was sort of talked about during the pregnancy but at the end it seemed like the victim had no issue with letting the abusive father share parental rights, which is concerning to me. The couple didn’t even know eachother that well in my opinion before they got pregnant (eloped 2-3 months in??) PLUS the abuse should raise some red flags and she even said “legally I have no choice to let him be a father” or something along those lines NO there are most definitely legal actions that could have been taken. Not even taking legality into it she just seemed so sure that the father was the type to only be abusive to her only and not her baby, just like HER father was. Anyway I guess we didn’t see the first few months after birth to see how they handled that and it was sort of implied she would want to supervise visits so maybe we assume everything went well and she decided to trust him alone with their daughter but… maybe more explanation would have been good.

FINAL COMPLAINT I swear this time: the guy literally begging for sex in the beginning after she made it very clear she didn’t want to… ick.

ALRIGHT I didn’t mean to write a novel I just had to get all my thoughts out so I knew how to rate it. Overall I admit I went into this thinking it would be bad due to CH slander I see all over tik tok but it was better than I expected. I actually liked it despite my 109833 complaints I listed above. I just think it’s important to analyze deeper due to the subject matter. 3.5 stars.

Content Warnings