I haven’t talked books with y’all in awhile. I just finished one that’s like all the rest: Devastatingly handsome guy meets girl. They fall in love. They get married. They both have brilliant, successful careers in the big city that has a small-town vibe. Guy becomes abusive. After much back and forth, girl leaves. He begs for her forgiveness and to come back. Meanwhile, girl has reunited with high school boyfriend, who is perfect in every way, wealthy, and unattached. Girl discovers she’s pregnant by dreamy, abusive, estranged husband. They try to work it out. Girl decides she’s gonna be strong and still pursue divorce. Guy is emotionally wrecked and never stops trying to win her back.
The author’s note at the end said she wanted to create a strong female protagonist and show that abusive relationships aren’t always black and white. Yeah, I get that. Abusive relationships are generally created by a subtle, gentle erosion. They don’t just throw you up against the wall and break your jaw on your honeymoon. It’s a much slower process that I believe begins mentally.
My problem is this.
You want to create a strong female character? Well, give her a life that won’t be so great without the abusive husband. Don’t give her her own business with a strong support system of girlfriends and an understanding mom who lives five minutes down the road. Give her a job that she’s been at six months or less that’s just that– a JOB, not a career. Somewhere that people don’t get to know you or look at the bruises on your arms. Make her relationship with her family strained, or make them live far away. And certainly don’t give her another man to go running to, or even one waiting in the wings just in case she needs him. Don’t always let the man be sorry, let him hate her with a poison so strong it leaves a bad taste in the reader’s mouth and let him go be free to entangle other women in his web.
I need more realism. I need less neurosurgeons and more plumbers. I need less displays of men so in love they’re on their knees crying and more of, “Do we need milk, I’m gonna stop at the store for beer.” I need less granite counters and more cat vomit in the floor.
I need freaking REALITY.
🤦

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Spoiler alert……..

The book was Colleen Hoover “It Ends With Us”.