How to Write Intimate Partner Violence Case Study: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
As some of you already know, sensitivity reading or diversity reading is one of the services I offer. Specifically, I read a manuscript to help authors think through the details of a character or an experience that they lack knowledge about. I am a beta reader and I offer an opinion. I am not the “woke police” for publishing. My task is not to interfere with folks’ art, but to help cultivate the details that make the narrative more believable. (NB: I did not say “more real” because not everyone writes realist fiction.)
From now on, I will write book reviews, to highlight portions of the book that would require specialized knowledge about a particular experience. In what follows, I want to talk about the depiction of intimate partner violence in Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us.
I must admit that I picked up It Ends With Us by mistake. I was surfing for another romance to read and this popped up in the algorithm. Hoover is an established romance author and It Ends With Us won the Choice Award for best romance. On her site, she markets herself as a – and I love this – “professional make believer.” When It Ends With Us popped up, I thought it would be standard fare. It is. And, it isn’t.
The heroine (Lily Blossom Bloom) hails from Plethora, Maine. This piqued my interest until Lily tells us that she took a flight from Plethora to Boston. There are very few places in Maine from which one could or would fly to Boston, unless one has a private plane. This was annoying, but I am used to people’s misrepresentations of certain places like Maine or New Jersey. They are places that folks think they know, but don’t really.
Anyway, during her teenage years, the heroine falls in love with a young man (Atlas Corrigan) who is squatting in a home close to hers. They begin a relationship based on Atlas’s need for clothes, food, and a shower and Lily’s need for protection. She lives in an abusive home, where her father (the mayor) routinely abuses her mother. The novel begins after Lily’s father’s funeral, where Lily refused to say anything nice about him. Lily meets a handsome, intense, career-driven MGH-employed neurosurgeon (Ryle Kincaid), who can’t seem to get her out of his mind. They become a couple and Ryle begins to abuse her, just as she runs into Atlas. FYI: MGH stands for Massachusetts General Hospital also jokingly referred to as “Man’s Greatest Hospital” because of some of the attitudes of the physicians and staff. For the record, the neurosurgeon who took care of me had absolutely wonderful bedside manner.
Depicting intimate partner violence requires a deft hand. Not only is it a common experience, but it is also a widely variable experience. The common denominators – abuse cycle, violence, isolation – gives writers some touchstones. Nonetheless, writers need to make the story and the characters believable. This is difficult in part because of the way intimate partner violence is perceived and because of the complications of these relationships.
Colleen Hoover structures It Ends With Us in such a way that I wanted to stick with Lily. Rather than move through chronological time, Hoover moves us through two timelines: the main timeline begins at the end of the funeral; the secondary one, laces through with entries from the journal Lily kept as a teenager (letters addressed to Ellen Degeneres). This allows us to read the story of her home and her romance with Atlas as we are also reading her romance with Ryle. First, this does not overwhelm the reader because Hoover gives us a clear message at the beginning when the father is introduced. It is the closest one gets to a trigger warning. Second, this structure metes out the terror such that readers who would be triggered by it, or who are unfamiliar get a bit of a reprieve in between scenes of violence. Juxtaposing the violence with a healthy adolescent romance also allows us to see what is brewing with Ryle.
Here's where I have a complaint. Hoover does romance well, so I can tell that the scenes between Lily and Ryle are completely in the pocket. They have the requisite butterflies, the anticipatory erotic charge, and sly descriptions of intimacy. These scenes also lack enthusiastic consent and have a degree of intensity that would make me balk at a suitor. Especially when juxtaposed next to the journal entries, the Ryle and Lily’s courtship feels driven by Ryle’s obsessive, and possessive nature, and marked with instances of disrespect and creepiness. I felt this so keenly that the intimate scenes between them made my skin crawl.
My reaction, quite frankly, is one of a (ahem) plethora of reactions readers can have. Some readers will go all in for Ryle and Lily until they can’t. Some readers might still want Ryle and Lily to be together. Some readers will sense something is off but won’t be able to put their finger on it. This wide variety is not something I’d tamp down on as a sensitivity reader, but rather something I’d encourage an author to be aware of.
There is much more that Hoover does well: the separation between the couple, the support system, the maternal conversation. I’d like to highlight something that might seem minor, but really is key: the reactions of other men. Their reactions range from pity to sorrow to protective to tentative. I was grateful that no one questioned her decision to leave and that no one attempted to make her stay. I think some of that may be part of the “professional make believer” impulse and the hope available in romance fiction. That said, the other men in the text make it clear that abuse isn’t a requisite part of a relationship. The possibility of those other men, including but not limited to Atlas, keeps the novel from feeling like another genre. It keeps the romance alive.
I hear there’s a sequel and a movie coming. I hope that both rectify the lack of people of color depicted, especially in Boston, especially since one character is a veteran.
Please take a look at the other book reviews where I point out other useful strategies. Please stay tuned for more “how tos.”