I’ve been itching to pick this book up for some time now since booktok recommended it but after reading tsoa idk if I should trust booktok with supposed tragic books anymore.

I’m glad I did because this book is so powerful in many ways.

I had NO idea it would deal with domestic abuse and serious issues. Judging the title, I simply thought it was just a tragic love story between two people. But I assure you, this book ended happily. What made half of the readers cry over this book is the message and their attachment to a one particular character.

This one book alone made me want to read the entirety of her collection. It was that GOOD. The way CoHo constructed her characters, into making us really REALLY attached with them, especially with Ryle and then suddenly breaking our hearts with a new opinion about him.

This book’s an eye opener. I never really get why women still tolerate and tend to stay with their abusers. I just simply thought they were blinded with love which is true but I never thought how hard it would be for them. To let go of someone you care and love.

It shows the cycle of abuse, how most cases of abuse worsens the longer you stay. Just because you love them doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you and just because you love them doesn’t mean you can’t hurt them. What’s heart breaking also is people thought that their love would change them to a better person, that their love would be enough and when it didn’t… they’re back to square one.

I hate how much I sympathized over the abuser but then I guess that’s the point? To be in the perspective of those who were abused and loved at the same time. I learned how most women stay with their abuser because they have this mantra that ‘If you dealt with for 5 years then what more can another year do?’

and that speaks volume. It shows how PEOPLE have limits, they have lines, but those limits slowly loosen up the longer they stayed, until they straight up tolerate and suffer from their abusers. How people stay despite suffering from their lovers’s worst so long as they’re also at their best. How people tend to forgive easily thinking that ‘at least they said sorry’. How people tolerate abuses thinking ‘at least it was just a slap and not a beating this time’.

We see how their psychology works, we see from their perspective how hard it is to let go of the person you love and care for and how sad and dangerous it is for some people to love when they are emotionally challenged or have no control over their emotions. We see that if you truly love that person you would let go of them because you know that they deserved better, they deserve someone who doesn’t lash out when they’re angry, they deserve someone who doesn’t hurt them, and no matter how much you love them leaving them is the only way because they deserve so much more.

This book is so sad and heart warming at the same time. A book I would see myself recommending forever.