Maddy Burgess
Trigger warning: mentions of abuse in this article.
Colleen Hoover’s novel of lost love, romance, heartbreak, and abuse has taken social media by storm and made its way onto many bookshelves.
It follows the life of flower shop owner Lily Bloom, as she navigates a new relationship with Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgeon who seems too good to be true. They meet on a rooftop after Lily’s abusive father’s funeral, and you can feel the chemistry through the pages.
Empathy
I began reading this book after seeing the hype on Tiktok (or ‘Booktok’). I, like many other readers, was expecting a light-hearted and dreamy love story. I was taken aback by the devastating realness of the twists and turns. Hoover has a magical way of putting you in Lily’s shoes and when the initial abuse occurs, it shocks the reader in a way that makes you realise how it feels to be in love with your abuser.
As readers, we root for Ryle and Lily as we see him through her eyes, as a likeable character. He’s stubborn and arrogant but has a soft spot for Lily and devotes his world to her. The devastation when he hits her for the first time is harrowingly powerful. I remember re-reading the pages in absolute shock.
“Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen seconds that we’ll never get back.”
He then promises her it will never happen again and as a reader, I almost found myself forgiving him. The writing really forces you to re-think your preconceived ideas about abuse, think about how difficult it is to leave these kinds of situations and the bravery involved with women who do.
Lily is one of the most realistic and honest literary heroines I’ve come across in a long time. Her strength is both empowering and heartbreaking, as she wrestles with the war between her head and heart. It opens your eyes to how abuse is not black and white. Confused and misled, I didn’t know how to feel while reading it. It poses the question “what would I have done in this situation?”
Rose-coloured glasses
Hoover’s foreshadowing throughout the book is subtle and I didn’t even notice it the first time I read it. It’s easy to ignore red flags when you’re wearing rose-coloured glasses. The whole first chapter is full of it. The first time Ryle and Lily ever meet, he’s kicking chairs over, but we overlook that once he and Lily begin to flirt. One quote that really stuck with me was:
“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”
While all of this is going on, Lily is reminiscing on her past and tells the story of her and her first love Atlas, through diary entries. Atlas was homeless when he and Lily met when they were just teenagers. These chapters delve into the issue of homelessness and how Atlas is treated by others is soul-crushing. Some of my favourite interactions were between Lily and Atlas, and as the book goes on, he becomes a beacon of light.
Ending cycles
The book draws to an end after an emotional last few chapters, where Lily makes the choice we all want her to. She ends the cycle of abuse; the abuse she watched her mother go through, that she was faced with, and that she does not want her daughter to go through.
“And as hard as this choice is, we break the pattern before the pattern breaks us”.
Overall, with a five-star rating, this is one of these books I would implore everyone to read. It’s one that got me out of a reading slump and I know it’s going to stick with me for a long time.
Featured image courtesy of M. on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license found here.
