by Colleen Hoover

A Contemporary, 2016 by Atria Books, 386 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

Content warning: Abuse (spousal, sexual, and emotional). Also suicidal thoughts and actions.
Some of the writing comes across as lazy. Not a direct quote (because audiobook) but something like “I haven’t looked at them since the last time I looked at them” was used. That’s UNHELPFUL. That could be ten minutes or ten years, we have no idea when the last time you looked at them was (since it’s off page). There were other examples like this, believe it or not.
This is not a romance. It’s marked as such, which is where I think it gets so much hate from. Approach it as a contemporary fiction story and you’ll like it better. It’s twisted, a little dark, and not at all about two people falling in love. Instead, it’s a story about abuse, knowing where your boundaries are, and walking away.
That ending needs work. Let’s just remember that it’s NOT breaking a cycle to give someone the opportunity to prove again that they will let you down, no matter who they are. Unsupervised visits are NOT a good idea. At all.

The dating practice angle is adorable. Which is not a word I expected to use for this book. The early dating history with Atlas is adorable. Much of the beginning of this book is adorable, which makes the ending that much darker and harder. (Remember: this is NOT a romance. Approach this as you’d approach a contemporary story about abuse to appreciate the tool here of making it seem impossible, as the main character would say it is).
There’s a sense of mystery surrounding the middle of the book that took me by surprise. There’s suddenly a huge sense of “whoa, there’s something I don’t know” that sort of catches you off guard. That’s the moment where the story becomes much, much darker.
The boundary setting, when it finally comes, is a good lesson. Of course, it’s a lesson the right people may never find because this would be a hard book to pick up if you were in an abusive relationship and needed this book.

Contemporary readers who like darker subject matter addressed head-on. Again, this is NOT a romance. It has romance tropes and a romance sort of ending, but it is NOT a romance. Beware.