I read another book outside of my wheelhouse. On theme with the previous attempt, this time I read It Ends With Us.
Once again, the writing was simple and easy. I didn’t read this one in two days but I read it fairly quickly. Like the former, the Lifetime/Hallmark movie cliches were immense, and there was a lot of tell-don’t-show going on. That makes for a snappy read, but also makes for a poorly believable, hollow story.
The plot centered on a lady who comes from a domestic violence household who swears she’ll Never when she grows up but, of course, runs head-first right into it. That brings her to Mr. Toxic Masculinity, a guy who has no impulse control because he has a mopey dark past and boohoo him. Right out of the gate he tries to coerce her into sex. Proceed nonsense. We end up on a journey while main character decides how she feels about walking red flags.
I was still pretty skeptical of romance as a genre when I was young, but if I had been much younger than I am now, I might not have noticed the overall tone of what this book put out. At this point in my life I saw through the character(s) and saw the author’s psyche showing, as well as took note of the popularity of this book as a general reflection of society being stupid. I am yucking your yum, kids. Or not-kids, even. Because the author was around 36 when she puts these words out into the world and, as much as she was trying to go for empathy towards her IRL parents, she put out a message I don’t feel best represents those who’ve been abused or grew up in an abusive environment (or might potentially be facing those things). In the fantasy “spicy” realm of the book, it’s a bad representation of female sexuality, whether we’re talking the teenager or the adult. While there are folks who are (for example) demisexual, or prefer to be pursued, or only find enjoyment in superficial and physical attraction, or are into victim-savior ideas, the book insinuates the character has a strong attraction to a man but the actual “show” (not telling) element is not apparent and it comes across like cardboard. In reflection, it seemed like more evidence of purity culture leaking into the minds of folks who don’t participate. While that might be a result of tempering for one’s audience, ennnnh. No. We can do better.
Of course, the sex-is-scary crowd has things to say about “spicy” content in the sense of “oh no! not the children! my begonias!”, even if it’s limp noodle city to anyone who’s ever read, written, watched, or imagined women doing their own thing outside of the context of being seen as a prized series of holes by some random asshole begging on the floor that he just needs one fuck.
I wrote a billion more words about this and wrote about how irritating society was about apparent sexuality when I was a teenager (things haven’t changed much), but that sums it up. The book wasn’t a terrible read as far as the literal reading experience, but the content needed assistance. I hope the young people who pick this book up because it’s popular know better, but based on the 4-5 star reviews I keep seeing, ennnnnh.
No idea what I’m reading next.