A review by philyra91
Bitter End by Jennifer Brown

3.0

Bitter End was a hard book to read, not because it was bad or anything but because it was written well. It was written so well that I genuinely felt creepy while reading it. Bitter End is the story of Alex and Cole, who meet and fall in love. Alex truly feels like she has found “The One” but she cannot ignore the fact that Cole is increasingly getting paranoid, mean and downright abusive. Will she be able to find the courage to leave him?

As much as Cole was written as a nice guy in the beginning, I just couldn’t get into it. From the summary, you already know that Cole is the “bad guy” here. He’s the abusive one so I viewed every action of his, every narrowing of his eyes, every possessive touch as just a symptom of his downward spiral.

Once again, we have a female lead that, for some reason, stays with her abusive boyfriend. I’m not saying I understand this since I have never been in this situation, but I simply can’t see why she would. Cole clearly isn’t a good person for her. The argument is that she wants to be the one who saves him because he’s in a bad place as well, and it’s as valid as any other reason but for Alex to go so far as saying that it’s because Cole loves her and no one has ever loved her before, that’s a bit of a stretch for me. Surely, her two best friends, loyal and protective to the very end, love her too?

All in all, it was a difficult story to read but a necessary one that had to be told. My only real gripe is that why is it that abusive characters in books never get their just desserts? It’s only implied that Cole got into trouble

Spoiler

for a previous offence

and not for what he did to Alex. His treatment to Alex was pretty brutal and people did find out in the end, so whatever happened to him? :(