Hey, Ebony Darkness was following genre conventions; so basically when you think about it, the choice is legit 😊 Meaning CH is not following any trope logic and just being 😬
For anyone who needs to hear this: Abusers don't have anger problems. They don't explode because they can't control themselves. They control themselves in every situation and around every person, except one. They don't punch their boss in the face when they're upset. They can control themselves. They just choose not to.
It's so obvious but somehow, I never really realised this before reading your comment. This has put things in a very different perspective for me. Thank you.
They choose to bottle up their emotions and terrorize the vulnerable people around them (including unknowing strangers), because they know its difficult for them to defend themselves, leave, or they don't even expect it. These are the truly rotten cowards of society.
thank u. rachel does a very poor job of explaining this, and i got so upset when she said that people that lash out on objects due to anger are bad people. i have anger issues. it caused me so much pain as a child because people loved pushing my buttons and getting a reaction. sometimes, even now as a new adult, i get so angry that i just need to punch something. i know that people arent to be hurt. i hate the fact that ive hurt people in the past. i feel like i have to atone for every single bad thing i do, which also aligns with something rachel says abusers do (ie when the abuser guy in the story lashed out after burning his hand and hurt lily and apologized profoundly soon after). i think rachel is covering this issue badly, this issue real people who are more than their anger face, and it just upsets me so much. ik the abuser guy is abusive. but hes abusive for more reasons than rachel states.
I saw some girl complaining about Blake Lively, that she looked overweight and old, and this told me everything I needed to know about Colleen Hoover's readers
I actually complained about Blake Lively before I saw what the costume and makeup department did to her for the role because she's too naturally pretty and glamorous looking to play Lily imo. To be fair about the age thing, Blake is in her 30s. Lily is in her early to mid 20s.
Also, I don’t understand how Lily could divorce Ryle and realize how abusive he his, but still allow her child to be alone with Ryle, knowing he has violent outbursts and blackouts. Lily, what happens one day when your daughter comes to you and says, “Mommy, Daddy hit me but said it would be the last time, what should I do?” 🤨😒
I feel like CoHo realized this and needed to cater to her younger viewers a bit in the second book. In that one, Lily refuses to let him have overnights with her and actually considers taking him to court. But her lawyer advises her to just settle outside of court and its actually painfully real imo. Ryle is going to be surgeon. He has no record, known history of violence, and comes from a good home. He would have taken Lily to court and could have gotten full custody or joint custody which is worse.
@@xyzzyx1100 Duh, but it’s the way that Lily doesn’t care at all and is perfectly fine with it. It also gives the impression that the guy (whatever his name is, i forget) is a redeemable character and that abusers like him should be able to be with their children and that it’s perfectly fine for children to be alone with abusers since their is no pushback on the situation. I’m not critiquing Lily’s lack of resistance and not going to court in particular, but how willing she is and how she could care less about her child’s safety lol
I wish the people who defend the merits of this book realize Colleen basically just uses domestic abuse as a plot device to get lily and atlas together
I really want to know why she uses abuse in all her books. Every single Colleen Hoover book I've encountered has a male love interest that is violent or manipulative. Like, girl, you ok? They all have dumb af names too
@@Katka.Ivanova Well, this book was inspired by her own mother who stayed in an abusive relationship. I think Colleen understands to some degree what happens in that type of relationship but only so far as what happened in the ones she's seen. I know from personal experience that sometimes people develop a sort of tunnel vision when they have negative experiences. To them, as long as someone doesn't do that one thing or the circumstances arent almost identical it's not as bad. It sounds really weird, but it happens more than you'd think.
I always found it weird that she saw the experience of abuse in regards to her mother and then romanticized it in her writing. I know people deal with things differently but it feels gross to me personally. If she wrote books to educate on the topic, I'd respect that, but she uses it as a ploy to get the protagonists closer. It's icky.
Fist-fights are inherently homoerotic. You ever watched Fight Club? Played Metal Gear Solid? Hell, in the original Olympics, people boxed bare (as in, “without protective gear” and “without clothes”.) (I meant all of that as a joke. Seriously, though, the Olympics were wild shit, man.)
Her mom saying “you’re just too young to understand marriage” when confronted with her own abuse is GUT WRENCHING as a child who grew up in a toxic household. How dare Colleen Hoover include these extremely realistic depictions of abuse and then glamorize abusers?
She seems to find names with street signs so maybe we could crowd source her to go to New York City so we end up with characters named A, 5th, or … never mind she’d just name them Brooklyn and Lexington and Hudson like Gargoyles.
I dont get some authors aversions to just using normal names. most of my favorite characters have pretty common, well known names. and even if they dont, they have names that had thought put into them. CoHos naming sounds like she just named them after random objects she had lying around her house and called it a day.
LITERALLY and while ‘Lily Blossom Bloom’ is simply ridiculous, I don’t even think this book has the worst ones, some of the names from her other books (such as Tate, Chastin, Crew, Layken, Caulder, among many others) make me want to roll my eyes out of my skull
4:50 Weird motifs I’ve noticed in the CoHo stories: - Aforementioned witness of death or thinking about death by female lead - Male lead became an atheist after relative’s death and then believed in God again after seeing a hot girl - Male lead blocks female lead from entering/exiting room - Male lead’s voice is so sexy, it hypnotises female lead into wanting to be around him - Scene where male lead and female lead interact in which female lead is barefoot and the male lead strokes her feet - Flashback chapters to teenhood and/or scenes where an old diary from teenhood is read that recounts events relevant to the plot in the present day - Female lead is most likely 23 years old (i.e. remains this age throughout or ends the story at this age) - Non blood-related incest - Female lead analyses male lead’s handsomeness in pore-for-pore detail
Is it possible the witnessing death / thinking about death opening scenes are inspired by Twilight's "I'd never given much thought to how I would die"?
Honeslty, I wished the author would have just made this a story about a woman getting out of an abusive relationship and left out Atlas's story. All it did was create this wish fullfillment fantasy of another man saving a woman and whisking away off into the sunset.
But the things which are terrible are much more interesting to read/watch etc. In fiction. Nobody says to look at fiction as a template for how to live real life. It exists for entertainment
@@KateeAngel saying fiction is just entertainment and implying it has no consequences on real life is beyond stupid, aside from demonstrably false. Many people seek relationships like these. Many people stay in toxic, abusive relationships because content like this. And fiction is not just entertainment, it is art, a form of expression, often carrying messages and parallels to real life. Truly, how could you even write such a flippant commment????? What was your objective?
@@KateeAngel Depending on the audience and the type of audience it attracted, A.k.a an audience of young adults/ teens and tackling themes of abuse, this content can and will affect people. Everyone is influenced by stuff both consciously and subconsciously, depending on the maturity of the person.
The part where he reveals his childhood trauma during his ‘apology’ is exactly what my abuser did. My abuser sa’d me multiple times and each time he had a story about his own abuse as a kid. When he’d hit me or cheat on me, he came up with these outlandish stories that were completely irrelevant but they made me feel sorry for him. Instead of protecting myself he made it so I had to comfort him and then because I was comforting him, that means that conversation was over and we moved on from it. I could never bring it back up because in his eyes, I forgave him already. It was torture.
My abuser did that too. When I was telling him what he was doing was SA he brought it back to a story of him being SA'd by a cousin. I'm still not sure I believe his story as he focused on weird things. Like he said a therapist knew he'd been through a lot because he has a '9 yard stare' but, he was clearly talking about his usual focused stare, which is totally different. Just doesn't sound like something a therapist would say and didn't sound applicable to him, but he brought it up to imply someone had clinically validated his experience? When responding to the fact he was abusing me in real time? Just seemed ... weird. I don't know survivors who would approach the fact they're replicating their own abuse in such a self-serving and weird way.
Only 20 minutes in but I just wanted to say your description of the kind of man you'd like to read about in romance books made me a little teary as a guy myself. It's so easy to get caught up in trying to live up to that ideal people like Hoover write about- Tall, brooding, controlling (only acceptable if you're attractive), ripped, insanely good in bed, etc etc- you end up forgetting that there are plenty of people who's ideal guy doesn't line up with that at all. I'm a smaller dude, not very strong, my voice doesn't resonate in someone's stomach or whatever, I'm autistic and I prattle on about weird niche subjects, but I'm not an ass, I try to do good things and I love the people in my life. And someone will love me for that. I guess I just wanted to say I appreciate the reminder.
As a woman, controlling is a big NO no matter how attractive someone is. I have no desire for a man to tell me what to do, or try to be in control or 'take charge '. It's the biggest turn off there is.
Good looks can't make up for a shitty personality. Plus people have really diverse preferences. These people are just in fiction because they are conventionally attractive and slightly generic enough to reach the most viewers. Keep trucking! It's also a meme in the medical community that neurosurgeons never leave the hospitals and think they are the greatest things to ever grace this planet. The most unrealistic part of this novel was him having so much free time. lol
as another autistic person who also prattles on about weird niche things, someone like that is my ideal person tbh, good luck to you finding someone, 'cause i'm sure you will but yeah, i hate how these kinds of books act like every person has the same "dream person", like we all have a "type" and it's different for everybody
As a person with children, who has always wanted children, I have to say that I've always thought of the desire as selfish in nature. It strikes me as odd when people say the opposite, that not having children is selfish. The only reason I wanted to have children is well, because I *wanted* it. I hope they end up providing a benefit to the world, that their existence is a sum positive on the balance of the universe, but that's not the reason I had them. I had kids because I wanted to. That's the whole of it.
As someone who struggles with BPD and highly complex childhood trauma which I would likely carry on to my children, I put a stop on my efforts to get pregnant when I realised how selfish I was being. I wanted a family, someone to love me and not the other way around as it should be... Sometimes to end the cycle you have to become the last generation
@@emilybastong3896 "sometimes to end the cycle you have to become the last generation" is such a simple statement yet so profound and oddly haunting, thank you
Haha, it depends on the person. When I first met my boyfriend he trauma dumped hardcore, on our first date, but I think he did it to be as upfront as possible about what he’s gone through in life, how it affects him, etc, but it wasn’t cringey, only insightful
This is just abuse fetish. A lot of teenage girls have ruminations of older men "taking control". Hence twilight etc gained so much popularity . But unfortunately the young teenagers don't take it as escapism :/
Horny teenagers fantasising about things they don't really understand is totally normal and fine. Having adults tell them that these things are okay is not fine
@@Ashbrash1998 Yeah but not only discuss them but be a proper example. Not sure why people think books are what should educate young girls about relationships. When a book sets you up for abuse, then a LOT has to have been going wrong up until that point. Just like social media doesn't make teenagers anorexic. It's always the social context where those ideas can thrive in the first place. People, especially caregivers, need to take responsibility because a child's tendency for self esteem develops long before they can read. They need that healthy foundation and then problematic media won't get to them as easily. Not that I'm condoning CoHo for anyone under 18 but since you can't ban books, it's best to work with that reality.
@@ShirumoonI think it's complicated. I wouldn't want a young teenager reading books like these because parents aren't the only influences in their kid's lives. You want to educate and model a healthy relationship while also teaching gratitude and empathy for others. But the books are popular among their friends and banning them can limit socialization with their peers. Young girls shouldn't learn about relationships from books, but books and friends and music and games are a massive influence too. Plus teenagers are hitting a developmental point where they want independence from their parents. The rules and standards they grew up with are ready to be tested while they figure out who they are and how they want to live.
The way Hoover constantly uses Atlas's homelessness as this like, way to both paint him as some sort of "lesser" person and charity case and to make Lily look like some saint for being ~the only person~ to view him as human is so disgusting and I'd be shocked if it didn't speak to her actual views about homelessness.
I understand people loving the drama but marketing these as "romance" is so problematic. They're all abusive relationships with love interests who are trying to be redeemed but aren't. Not to mention that CoHo is a terrible person and a rape apologist. 😕
I think the Ellen letters were an attempt to have representation without actually having to do any work. When Lily writes “sorry. Have you liked any girls “ it feels like Colleen just throwing it to be a reminder she had a queer character in her book. It feels like she put that in so people can’t complain about her complete lack of representation for any minority.
So, about that... i went to the big book fair we have here yearly (Buenos Aires, Argentina) with a friend of mine and she was talking about books she liked when we come across this section of Colleen Hoover books that got released for the first time translated into spanish and she legit started freak-put cryimg with joy over it. The poor women working at the stand are looking at us funny (or awkward, rather) and i am just trying to comfort her because she keeps being apologetic and self aware about the whole thing (i am not good at this and the surprise factor is triggering my anxiety extra hard) so i just think i'll be a pal and buy her the book. She is completely overjoyed and can't stop gushing about the book and telling me how hard i'd relate to it what with my history both with my parents and my ex wife and all (though some comments she made about the specific things that happened did make me arch an eyebrow)... after watching this video and seeing actual quotes from it, i can confidently say i feel... concerned, shall we say, about the whole thing.
After hearing that people cried over Ugly Love which has some of the cringiest dialogue that I've ever read, i'm not surprised. CoHo fans do not have standards lol
@@princessmolskiii CW: Mentions of SA Fanfics on Wattpad were wild. I remember one where the MC was kidnapped by one direction. The other where one direction members hide a girl (MC) who was kidnapped and r*ped but escaped. Harry later r*ped the MC but then a few months or so later, forgave him because 'he had a reason' and lived happily ever after with 1D.
You should look into Colleen Hoover’s son! Of course, only if that’s something you’d be comfortable with! I’ve read that’s he’s harassed a girl ( i can’t remember whether she was a minor or not at the time. Edit: she was 16 and he was around 21) and when the girl went to Colleen for help and proof, Colleen blocked her. It’s disgusting and needs to be talked about!
I worked as a Librarian when TikTok popularized Colleen Hoover and I have a love-hate relationship with her books. On the one hand, I find it great it got so many people into reading. We need more people to care about books and literature. On the flip side... the books are terrible 😅
i work in a bookstore and this is the same feelings i have on BookTok as a whole. it really rejuvenated reading, especially in younger people which makes me so happy… but all the books are trash 😭
I’m not sure I’d count more people reading for these books as a good thing considering how readers internalize messages in books. If I wasn’t such a reader growing up, I wouldn’t have been into so many books that has abusers portrayed as romantic, and I might have seen that my own relationship with I was 17 was abusive. It too me five years to get away, and longer to see that I was being abused, because the best-selling books I was reading showed that behavior as romantic. Usually more reading is good, but these are exceptions. (I don’t think we’d call an increase in reading for Mein Kampf a positive thing.) 😥
EXACTLY, I heard people in one of my classes talking about the books n I thought it was so cool that people who (of their own admission) did not read books were picking up a book and excitedly sharing it with their friends and getting everyone they knew to read it and all genuinely enjoying it especially since I think school really turns a lot of people off reading bc of mandatory reads that are quite unappealing to the average high schooler, it's great to see people giving books a second chance and realizing that there are such things as good books that are fun to read if only CoHo's books were actually any good 💀
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria I half-relate to this. While I have never been in a relationship, I was also an avid reader and also being a non-native speaker, my first introduction to books were the abusive male lead romances because they were easy-to-read. And those books led me to romanticize such sort of relationship dynamics. I had no concept of healthy romance and thought that the stuff the male love interest did that violated the consent of the female main character was attractive/ that meant the LI really loved and desired the MC.* I wanted my partner (regardless of their gender) to be like that because that's what I thought being loved and wanted by your partner meant. If I was in a relationship then, I wouldn't have been in a healthy relationship. And that's if my partner was not abusive. It took me several years of reading posts and comments, watching videos and reading books with healthy/ healthier relationship dynamics or books that made you uncomfortable with the abuse and/or toxicity present in them instead of romanticizing said abuse/toxicity that made me like, want and seek a healthy romantic life. * *Examples (maybe skip to the next paragraph if examples of lack/violation of consent are not your cup of tea?)* Over-possessiveness. Jealousy, but not the sweet kind. Kissing without prior consent and especially, kissing the MC to shut her up. Trapping the MC against the wall when she tried to escape. Saying something along the line of "Are you sure? If we go further now (while having sex), I won't be able to stop/control myself." There were more but these are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head. Note: I didn't read physical books (didn't have the books or the money to buy them) but I read Wattpad novels. Different medium but also, I don't see much difference in Colleen's books and the easy-to-read books that were published there by mostly teens.
i did an internship at a bookstore recently and one of my coworkers was raving about coho books to a teenage girl about how they were so well written and i found that very concerning.
I feel super.. uncomfortable about the framing of Atlas' homelessness. Feels like an odd savior fantasy mixed with "oh man he's so dirty and sad". I don't care about the character himself but it does show how so many people tend to view the average homeless person. Kind of icky.
Yeah I knew quite a few kids in school who definitely didn’t have a permanent home or lived in their cars- you wouldn’t have known if they didn’t tell you.
1:45:46 i'm sorry, i didn't follow your advice and did read it and you're absolutely right, it is weird. the thing is, i'm a med student (specifically, one who has quite some experience _in an actual medical context_ with a stethoscope) and i thought i'd use my hard earned knowledge to shed some light on why this scene is incredibly stupid but also really funny for that exact reason: - the fact that he listens to her heartbeat with the stethoscope and can easily estimate her heart rate _while he's screwing her_ is ridiculous for several reasons. first of all, if all he wanted to do is make out her heart rate, he literally could have just felt her pulse on her wrist with his own fingers (or her neck for that matter, i'm sure CoHo would have a field day with that, not that i condone it with a character like this jerk) instead of using the stupid stethoscope because the actual technique behind estimating someone's heart rate is just counting the beats within 15 seconds and multiplying that by 4 to get the beats per minute. not that he likely did that either because if you use that technique, you wouldn't easily get numbers like 110 but that's just me being petty. but yeah, unless homeboy also wanted to seductively comment on the state of her tricuspidal valve, the stethoscope was hilariously unnecessary (and probably really annoying for him, actually) - on that note, the whole thought of estimating her pulse while they're doing the spicy tango- i'm sorry, was there a clock nearby?? was this idiot checking his watch for 15 seconds while all this was going on? you cannot tell me that he somehow managed to keep track of exactly how long of a time 15 seconds is _while_ counting her heart beats _while_ apparently "destroying her in the best possible way" like come ON 💀 - okay, now here's the funniest part: do y'all know how a stethoscope works? well i don't either, not exactly at least, but the gist of it is that the diaphragm aka the part of the stethoscope that you put on the person's body is _very sensitive_ to noise. which makes sense, of course, because it needs to amplify the noises going on in the patient's body, things like the heartbeat but also any other pathological noises anywhere in or around the heart, any noises going on in the lungs or the bronchi, peristaltic noises in the intestines (or lack thereof! also very important!) etc etc. so, this need for very reliable noise amplification results in the fact that, and i know this from personal experience, if you so much as _tap_ the stethoscope anywhere near the diaphragm, hell, even if you have like... more than two fingers at a time on the bell (round part at the bottom) while the stethoscope is in your ears, you will get your ears almost blown out. because even the slightest shake of your hands on the diaphragm will result in a really loud noise. when i'm examining someone with a stethoscope, 60% of the time are spent with adjusting my hand and finger position to make sure i get minimal noise interference so i can even _hear_ the heartbeat. now imagine this dumbass using the stethoscope while all _that_ movement is going on. and CoHo thinks he's gonna be able to hear her heartbeat? or be able to hear anything ever again in his life, for that matter?? - in addition to that, this is a bit more of a minor point: another part of reliable noise amplification in stethoscopes is that the ear tips cancel out any surrounding noise very well (that isn't coming from the bell obviously but he's already getting enough noise from there which only adds to the overall noise cancellation lmao) and i just really like the thought of Ryle thinking he's all sexy and seductive and accidentally YELLING into Lily's ear because he can't actually hear how loud his voice is. and then he tells her "shh. no noises" PLEASE THAT CLOWN - and finally, the grand finale of stupidity, can someone tell me why, after all this nonsense has been going on, after he spent all this time trying to listen to her heartbeat in the most unnecessarily complicated way possible, at the end, he puts the _stethoscope ON HER WRIST_ ??? i fucking DIED laughing at that, i can't believe CoHo made her main love interest a doctor, not even any doctor but a _neurosurgeon_ (though, if he's still a resident as he says then i'm actually not sure if that's correct either but i can't confirm that because i'm german, who knows how american med school works lmao) and then CLEARLY didn't do enough basic research to make him anything but a stupid poser??? oh my GOD 💀💀💀 anyway that's all, i hope this was as entertaining for everyone else as it was for me, sorry for the super-long comment, the video is amazing and i'm gonna keep watching it now ❤
as a student nurse with minimal expertise in using a stethoscope i am horrified at this scene💀💀 i just hope he cleaned the bloody thing before using it on patients🤮
I am so glad someone else thought that 15 year old Lily and 18 year old Atlas dating was super weird and creepy cause while I reading that stuff I felt it was super gross but then thought I was going crazy and being overdramatic cause the book acts like it's a totally normal thing and not predatory at all.
Even worse, there‘s a scene where Atlas asks Lily about her age and when he hears her answer, he looks „sad“. Does Atlas look sad because now he realises that he won’t be able to sleep with Lily (legally)?! Ew.
It didn’t bother me that much lol my boyfriend in high school was 21 I was 17 lol we dated for 4 years and it was a fun first love relationship. Teenagers are horny lol 🤷🏻♀️
Books like this are what made me not aware that I was being assaulted as a child. The YA genera has so many truly concerning issues in relation to normalizing abuse :(
I didn’t realize my first boyfriend was abusing me. I didn’t see him raping me when I was in the hospital already as rape. I was with him for five years, and it took many more years to start to see that what he did was wrong. So much of what he did was shown in popular romance books to be good. I hated it, but how could I complain if I had the “ideal” man?
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria Not completely understanding the mechanisms of abuse when that abuse is turned onto you can be such a painful experience. I am so sorry you also had to go through something so horrendous by someone else’s hands. Even when people hurt you if that behavior has been ignored or (like in this book) even romanticized it can make finding and identifying healthy and unhealthy traits murky territory. I so wish something would change about the representation of sa in media so that kids and young adults could more easily identify what is healthy and implement boundaries much earlier and easier on. For example I used to describe assault on my playground (at school) as just “bullying” for 20 yrs because I didn’t know to call it anything else. But no one wears a one piece bathing suit under their clothes for a year so no one can touch them because they were just “bullied”. If so many of us only knew the extent of our abuse earlier maybe we could have acknowledged why it hurt us and how to heal sooner💞 wishing you and anyone else affected similarly so so so much unyielding happiness💞
One of the most stupid things about this book is that we're supposed to believe that Ryle starts off as being a kind and loveable man with whom Lily and the reader fall in love with. But, his abusive and manipulative tendencies are slowly revealed until it becomes clear that he is an abuser. The thing is that, from the beginning of the book, Ryle is already portrayed as an abusive and manipulative man. We are introduced to his character when Lily finds him kicking a chair out of anger, witch is very concerning. Later on, he begs and successfully coerces Lily into having sex with him, solely because he wants to. Also, he gives stalker vibes, showing up everywhere Lily was and even had a giant picture of her that he took the night they met on the wall of his sister apartment (they weren't even dating at this point, and even if they were, that's creepy). He was a 🚩FROM THE BEGINNING, not just when him and Lily got married!
Yeah, the red flags are so apparent if you look. That being said, I mostly just found him boring, cringe, and Wattpad before the abuse came into play. Especially since the flashbacks are the best part at first and Atlas was much better even as a teenager. I was actually warming up to Ryle when they were cooking together but then he hit her.
I found this book ridiculous as well. But when I read it I took it as the author displaying obvious red flags that might not be recognized by someone young or naive. Like she wrote him shitty from the start but still had women loving him cus muscles, charm, wealth, ext. And then after his first obvious display of abuse you can go back and realize he was shitty from the beginning. I thought that was the point? How someone might miss these red flags. Not her writing the perfect heartthrob and him flipping a switch one day. She’s showing the warning signs
If I remember correctly two things. Her father goes after him with a baseball bat, and it's not mentioned for pages, and when Ryle shoves her down the stairs and knocks her unconscious, she’s like oh. well.
i don't think that's ridiculous. narcissistic abusers come off very charming and exciting in the beginning. how do you think they lure in their victims? it's common to think that someone who has an "edge" like that is sexy or dangerous, but YOU'LL be the exception. lily wasn't, clearly, and i wish she'd figured that out sooner. the book needed to deal more with that realization. abusers don't have "exceptions." if they want to get better, they have to work on THEMSELVES. and that's just... not common or easy with these types of personalities.
I thankfully didn’t edit her video back when she spoke about this book so this was my first intro to this book, but since Alizee’s currently working on her own video about Verity, we’ve been talking about Hoover far too much and I’m so tired! 😂
People say you're too unforgiving of abusers? ABUSERS? I hope they never realize how being in that situation changes you. Learning not to excuse abuse is HARD. Normally I don't have a problem getting through your videos. I had to watch this in 2 parts. There are specific elements of abuse my ex used against me, and it just hit me how much I excused. I'm glad I got out when I did.
If you meet a guy and he immediately does 3 plus antisocial things: breaks someone else's property, stares at you inappropriately, and says something inappropriate, (i want to f you) consider that he might have antisocial personality disorder; not that he is a deep, complicated, datable man.
ASPD is waaaay more than just not being prosocial. It's complex and serious and this comment is legit insulting. That's like saying if you see someone cry they must have BPD. I've been w someone w ASPD for 13 years (yeahhhh can't wait til more is known about it than "and they're really a hassle to everyone else", it's way more internal and fucked up than that)
I’m a fairly tall and large woman so I have a touch of built in scary dog privilege. I might not leave a rooftop if a man came, but if he started to break shit I would get the fuck out
My RBF and "fuck off" aura tends to serve me well but yea, same @ booking the fuck out lol Like, I have better things to do than to get into an altercation for no damn reason.
Colleen Hoover exclusively writes women who are entirely defined by the men in their lives but hides that fact under a veneer of sass and pick me energy. They always have jobs associated with femininity and they always end up pregnant. Colleen must have never been outside of her privileged, femme bubble, and her blatant breeding kink is making it so much worse. But it's not just a one sided view of women, she only ever writes the exact same men. It is honestly pathetic and I feel Hoover needs to meet more people beyond the same archetypes. Also can we stop fetishizing wealth? Why is it always neurosurgeons and not just a male nurse or a janitor at a hospital? Men with smaller incomes can still be desirable. I am not a woman but was raised as one before I transitioned and I find it insulting to insinuate all women want is a dude with a fat wallet and no personality besides anger issues and trauma.
true, there's nothing wrong with having a "feminine" job but when she writes literally every character to be like that you know it's because she has some things internalized. she always writes both men and women in the most stereotypical way, it almost feels like weird parody of a bad romance novel, she writes exactly like what you imagine when you imagine a bad romance novel in your mind, but she's entirely serious and it's wild
"You don't need to have nearly died for it to be abuse" so, so grateful for your commentary in this video. I'm in the process of divorcing my abuser and have been struggling with describing my experiences as abuse because they never involved extreme violence. Thank you so much for your openness and honesty in sharing your story ❤️
Honestly, normalizing age gaps like that makes me personally nervous for the people who - like myself - will think it’s somehow glamorous and it means the “younger person is so mature and special.” That line of thinking had me at 18 dating a 29 year old man who emotionally, mentally, and (eventually) physically abused me for 3 years. It’s gross to have authors or other people in media painting it as a romantic or whatever, because it isn’t.
In my experience, I've always found older men attractive. I don't for one minute believe I was ever groomed or abused by any of the people older than me that I've hooked up with. Everything was of my own volition. You can say that you don't like big age gaps, but I legit hate this infantilization of 18-26 year olds.
Colleen's possible elevator pitch for this book: It's a commentary on domestic violence partially based on my mother's experiences. Oh, and the protagonist is also a florist named Lily Blossom Bloom who writes letters to Ellen DeGeneres and names her children after Pixar characters
As someone who wants them I think it’s actually the opposite of selfish. You’re not brining a random child into the world when you know you wouldn’t love them or couldn’t take care of them, like so many do. It’s a win win for everyone. No child deserves you as a parent if you don’t even want them and you don’t deserve to be pressured into having one if it wouldn’t make you happy.
Mental health disorders can explain abuser's behavior, but not excuse it. People with mental illness are still responsible for their actions. Believing otherwise is dehumanizing to those with mental illness.
I'm at the point where youre reading that bit where he begs her to have sex with him and he says, "Please, I'm really good at it." I'm actually in tears and halfway choking laughing. I have asthma. Help.
@Liz basically it means that either one or both of my identities are on the aromantic/asexual spectrum, rather than strictly being aroace. For me I'm grayromantic and asexual.
@@SkySpiral8 And anyone genuinely healthy enough to have an adequate level of independence. "Finding the one and be happy" can be really misguiding and I'm saddened that people like Hoover still pushes such an agenda.
@@MagisterialVoyager Yes, I agree. Before the romantic age of the 1800s, even western culture would have thought such a level of emotional codependency was absolutely ridiculous.
Somehow I feel like Coleen Hoover would be one of those people on the Internet trying to justify that Gaston 'wasn't actually all that bad, really' (or would be if she was on the Internet at a slightly earlier time)
Apologies for the terrible camera quality in this - I used the wrong lens and it was too late to change it by the time I realised, it was getting super late, I was ridiculously tired. I then had 24 hours of absolute hell attempting to export this. I feel like everything that COULD have gone wrong with this video, DID go wrong. Ugh. If you'd like some recommendations for fictional books which deal with similar topics (although not specifically DV) in a sensitive way I'd recommend My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell and The Girls of Summer - Katie Bishop. They're not only incredibly well-written but both show how these kinds of men can be so convincing that even their victims don't realise what is happening to them but at the same time, neither book ever glamourises or condones their behaviour. THIS is how you deal with these topics sensitively. Affiliate links to get these books: My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell UK: amzn.to/43OOUmp USA: amzn.to/3P5Wmos The Girls of Summer - Katie Bishop UK: amzn.to/3JaBkkN USA: amzn.to/43UUmnm I'd also recommend Dr Ramani's book Should I Stay or Should I Go? because this is the book which helped me leave my ex and saved my life. UK: amzn.to/45WWpJg USA: amzn.to/3p13esG Resources: Rape Crisis (England and Wales) bit.ly/3N64bIg Refuge www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/ SurvivorsUK www.survivorsuk.org Domestic Violence Hotline USA www.thehotline.org/
Camera Quality was good! I suppose the quality change is noticeable if you go from your last video to this one, but it's not something I noticed while watching. Sucks that you had so much trouble with the video though. This may be something you noticed while editing though, but I will say that the oven's clock flashing in the corner was fairly distracting once I noticed it. Maybe the camera position from the last video was adjusted slightly since and it didn't cut it off frame in this video.
Half way through the book i genuinely thought that the book was a romance. I feel like if there wasnt the lore dump at the begining and having flashbacks through the ellen letters would have changed the tune because then we would be able to see the paralleles. Also i would like to thank you because when i was 12 it was youtubers like you that taught me that abuse is not romance. Im 15 now and have never been in a situation where i would need to have known that. But i am still grateful that i know the signs of abuse just incase, god forbid, i am ever in that situation. So thank you.
Jesus. I’ve always said my boyfriend’s ex sounded abusive but the parallels I heard from your experiences really solidified that for me. Thankfully, he was never in a position where he feared for his life, but she screamed, hit, and pushed him all while telling him he’d never find a happy relationship without “fights” like that, for six years. Thank you for sharing your experiences and pointing out everything about this book!!!
The only way "lily blossom bloom who wants to be a florist" could be in any way not uncool would be if she was a trans girl naming herself after flowers. Tho people who end up choosing new names tend to have better taste and pick names that sound good together:P
Rachel, I don't know if you'll ever see this, but I wanted to thank you for speaking about your relationship with your brother. My sister had very bad anger issues growing up, and she took them out on me and my younger sister. My parents were extremely codependent and never did anything to help me. It feels like no one talks about or takes seriously abuse between siblings, so many people talk as if it is normal for older siblings to bully their younger siblings, and it hurts to constantly have my experience minimized. So thank you for making me feel less alone in my pain.
I love the razor glove analogy ❤ Edit: We have huge yards/gardens in the USA 😅 if you don't live in a huge city, having a big yard is not necessarily a sign of wealth
And one of my classmates wanted me to read it... Don't think I will, if not to physically and psychologically hurt myself. And also, Coleen Hoover wanted to do a COLORING BOOK of this novel.
I can't get over the fact that this book is supposed to be a tribute to Colleen Hoover's mother and she named the character based on her Lily Blossom Bloom and she owns a flower shop. 😂
Does…does she like her mother? Is this entire book maybe secretly a slight to her mother by writing shitily and being ‘oh yes I dedicate this book to YOU mom’ as a joke but someone took her seriously and published it?
@justvibinginouterdarkness1929 I think she internalized a verrrry warped view of abuse relationships from her mother and I think her books are very indicative of that.
I feel like some of these books with horribly controlling male characters are written by authors who find being dominated sexy and they would really benefit from a healthy dom-sub relationship. Then, maybe they could write about that! Like I get handing over control and how titillating that can feel, but my god, that has to be in the context of tremendous trust. And trust is earned through direct communication, respect of boundaries, and just generally caring about the person you are dominating. This character is NOT doing that.
the best depiction of dv I’ve seen in a romance novel (which focuses on an actual romantic relationship that doesn’t include the abuser) is still ‘blue eyed devil’ by lisa kleypas. it illustrates just how normalized and deceptive dv can be and how difficult the recovery is, but also how finding the right partner, who can support and heal you from within, is absolutely possible and what every woman deserves. re-reading it recently only enforced my absolute abhorrence for this trash, colleen hoover, and the legions of idiotic fans who continue to support her and the book.
Always blows my mind how open and honest you are about your past on here. You are so incredibly brave and strong for sharing your story to try and help others ❤❤
When you said "I'm stronger now, I got this" I genuinely teared up. You are *so* strong, Rachel, and though I am just a stranger to you, I am really proud of you for everything you have grown to be. Your character, kindness, strength, the work you do, and the way you are unapologetic about standing up for yourself and others, is the makings of just the very best kind of human. Plus, you and Kyra are the absolute cutest. Thanks for another great video
I like that you help normalize this complex topic by sharing your story. Someone that's been on the on the receiving end of mental and physical abuse I can relate. And having "i told you so, if you only listened..., we knew it ..." that hurt's so bad. Leaving with I love your content.
My friends and I have a "book club" they chose this. I HATED IT. It was painful for me to finish it. The worst part for me was that it was very predictable and even though, the main character was in a horrible situation, the writting didnt take me "there". 😅
Me and my friends have a book club as well. I am so glad that the only romance stuff we read are those over the top, sold at the supermarket, made for women in their 40s romances with the paintings of muscular, longhaired men on the cover. They are sometimes problematic as well but so badly written and established, you just know they are only there for the smut and no one would ever take them seriously. Reading them is really funny. I would have straight up refused to read something from CH...
This is probably a weird comment to leave on a video like this, but Alizee and Rachel are the manifestation of foil characters. You can feel the bestie energy. 🖤
I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that, and so glad you survived ❤. Thank you for openly talking about it, it’s so important to learn to identify abuse! That said, I loved how fed up you were with the characters. The amount of times you said “stop it” 😂 this is such bad writing that I can’t even think people like it as a guilty pleasure...
EDIT: I'm so glad you're in such a better place and time in your life. You're always so kind and soft-spoken in your videos despite all the stuff you've talked about going through and continue to go through and it's always so frustrating when you bring this stuff up because you didn't and don't deserve to have gone through that. (Not that anybody does, really, but I think you get my point.) I started the video and then you mentioned how long it was and then I checked it I was like "yep! Gotta leave a like first thing to help the algorithm!" I probably would have done so anyways because I love your content, but that just made me do it immediately. Knowing you, a video this long either means the thing you're going over is really good or really REALLY bad...
I am someone who had zero intention of reading this book, but I wanted to participate in the conversation surrounding the film right now, so I canned the whole book yesterday. It was … not good, and this video demonstrates the reasons beautifully. I’ve read fan fiction that has better prose and discusses domestic violence better. I’d LOVE a full update video discussing the marketing. ❤
Wow how special and revolutionary to name your character after …. Wait for it 😮 … Leeds (a town in England, thanks for explaining that Colleen lol) MY GOD, everything she does is CRINGE. I’m so tired of her male love interests and tired of mediocre at best writers getting book deals infinitely and even a movie 😭
How does someone who bLaCkS oUt in unConTrolLabLe anger get into medical school, much less a surgical residency ?? He’d never gonna make it through a neurosurgery fellowship smh it’s almost like that’s 100% bs
Or anything before the start of the damn course to begin with lol. I mean, I don't even know how this person made it through high school to begin with.
What you said about enthusiastically wanting to be with someone really hit home. In my personal experience, some people (myself included, I’ve been there as well) tend to go through a phase where they just want to be in a relationship so bad that they deceive themselves into thinking a bad match will work no matter what, that either themselves or the other person will change their mind overtime if you just “give it enough time”. But I find that that rarely ever happens because you’re forcing emotions to work where they should naturally grow, and it could result in either parties becoming inauthentic versions of themselves just for the sake of a relationship that was built on faulty foundation to begin with. Scary part is that if you lie to yourself about an unsuitable relationship long enough, you’ll begin to believe that lie. In short, it just leads to heartbreak 9 times out of 10
My abusive rapist ex wasn't weirdly close to his mom, but his older brother (also an abusive rapist, just not to me) was. Their mom literally ignored his victim telling her what happened. They both had explosive rage issues like Ryle, too.
Rachel, your work ethic is phenomenal. Thank you for reading, researching, probably some form of scripting, filming, editing and uploading 3+ hour long videos that are incredibly important, full of substance and high quality. I just want you to know it doesn’t go unnoticed, and wanted to praise your efforts as well as your intelligence and talents. Your videos are truly gems.
i don’t know how i stumbled upon and became a subscriber to rachel. but i do know that because of her channel, i’ve found a whole new genre of youtube which is book reviews. i never thought i’d be the type of person to watch MULTIPLE hours long book reviews, but here i am! i’d listen to these if they were a podcast as well.
thank you for talking about DV as openly as you do. i have a lonnnng history of emotional/psychological abuse from my parents and previous partners and for me it's always felt like the big elephant in the room. like i'm some weird damaged girl who's been abused. so thank you for normalizing these types of experiences, it's very helpful for making me not feel like an alienated freak.
"I don't like how much I think about you. Which isn't all that much" Yeah that just screams that someone is romantically interested in you. It comes off as more of a dig at someone who you don't like at all than something you say to a person you're attracted to
What you said about abusers who strangle being more likely to kill is really scary. My sister's ex was arrested for strangling his new girlfriend in front of her child. My sister's ex was never physically abusive to her, as far as I know, but he's been abusive to her in other ways. He yells and screams at her, he calls her names, he uses their 6 year old son to hurt or control her, he's extremely manipulative and mentally/emotionally abusive to their son, he's even drugged my sister with molly twice thinking it would make her have sex with him. My sister has a new boyfriend now. She's been with her new boyfriend for almost a year. This has made her ex act even worse. My sister's ex still goes back and forth from being cruel as he can, to love bombing and trying to get back with her. I'm always worried about my sister. Now that I've heard what you said about abusers who stangle being more likely to kill, I'm even more afraid for my sister. She can't just disappear and never have anything to do with her ex, because they have a kid together. The cops have been useless. They wouldn't even do a restraining order. Salt Lake City, Utah doesn't care about poor women at all.
I almost bought this book to bring along for my Summer holiday...happy I did not, the cliches, the normalization of abuse and all wrapped in pretty pink floral branding makes me uncomfortable! If I ever were to write a book, there is only one person I'd want to edit and/or review it; rants with Rachel, I know it would be better for it!
Ok ok ok, imma need to rant a little bit about this cause damn, I have very intense feelings. So I read this book after having it presented to me as "a very nuanced and realistic take on domestic abuse". I hadn't read any CoHo books before and in the first part I was like oh, look at all these red flags. The book is kinda cringe but I get it, it's setting it up as Lily missed all the red flags of him being manipulative, obsessive and controlling. But after the abuse started I realised that oh no no no, that was supposed to be the romantic part with absolutely 0 flags. WTF??? I have since hate-read 4 more CoHo books and know that's how she writes "romance". Listen, please don't judge me, I'm trying to be a romance/ya writer and it was a misguided attempt to understand what is popular (at first), and then it became me researching what NOT to do. Ok so back to this book. The fact that it ends with a man that has rage blackouts being entrusted with raising a child, makes me want to punch some walls myself. I understand that it's CoHo's own story, and her dad was great to her although abusive to her mother bla bla bla but ffs, it's so irresponsible. The chance that a man like that WON'T abuse their child is slim to none. Ooooh don't even get me started on the attempts to justify his monstrous behaviour. I can't. I just, I can't. I'm not for book banning but by all that is holy, if I were, CoHo books would be the prime candidates for that. It straight up grooms a whole new generation of young women to fall pray to abusive relationships. Ok rant over, sorry.
Can you explain where you got the idea that Hoover wasn't making the point of Lily missing red flags? Because I genuinely finished the book thinking that was the whole point. I left off with the message that entering an abusive relationship is not your fault, specifically because of the red flags at the beginning. I was under the impression that was the point of the book: to show how easy it is to dismiss red flags and excuse bad behavior. I saw this as an important narrative to show the readers that 1. If you're in or have been in an abusive relationship, it's not and never was your fault, and 2. Behavior and red flags that we've been conditioned to accept and excuse are actually not okay and should not be ignored. It seems you started with that message and changed your mind later. I actually did the opposite where I started off hating it and changed my mind when Lily saw how Ryle had manipulated her in the beginning. So I'm genuinely curious what you saw that I didn't. Im not disagreeing with you. Just feel like I missed something.
@@alexhilton2259 I mean yeah, you're probably missing something if you haven't read other Colleen Hoover books. If you had, like I did (unfortunately bleah) you would realise that Ryle's red flags are presented as romantic in all of her other books. All of them. Some more horrific than others but all nonetheless. They feature pushy and controlling men, insta-love (love bombing), men confining women to spaces (blocking doors) as "foreplay", men being sexually pushy as "foreplay", violent outbursts as signs of "passion". There is virtually no difference between Ryle and CoHo's other leading men, up until the first time he physically hurts Lilly. Hence, to me and plenty of other ppl all these things read as something that CoHo thinks is part of the romance. But even without reading other books, I distinctly got the feeling that Ryle was painted out to be the perfect guy, until he hit her. That what we can clearly see is a red flag, should be considered romantic in CoHo's mind. I hadn't read any other CoHo books so I don't know exactly how I could tell. Just, something was missing for it to be meant to be perceived as manipulation and red flags. And again, once I read a few more books I realised that yes, that is EXACTLY how she writes romance. To the point where there's a whole genre here on yt reading her books live, and people being horrified by how every male protagonist is a red flag at best and an emotionally abusive ahole at worst (I'm looking at you Ugly Love). Don't know if that clears things up but I hope it does. But that being said, I'm truly happy for anyone that got a good message from this books though. Just, maybe... not raising a child with a man that has rage blackouts. That's never a good message and I would know, as the child that was at the other end of such lovely parental displays, and barely made it out alive.
@@alexhilton2259 Ok I realised I may have gotten carried away by my hatred for this book and didn't really properly answered your question. Ok so to me it boils down to this. You said you "changed your mind when Lily saw how Ryle had manipulated her in the beginning". To me, this was never addressed. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, it's been a while since I read, but the only behaviour that was addressed as wrong was when he first hit her, in the kitchen, and then twisted the situation as an accident. That was, indeed, manipulation. But to me the actual red flags are: - him knocking on every door in her building to find her - him being obsessed with having sex with her, after minimal interaction - him being jealous that she brought someone else to the party, separating her from the crowd and blocking her from leaving - him being all "addicted" to her after the first time they had sex - him moving extremely fast We now have the tools to identify these behaviours as red flags and precursors to an abusive relationship, although for decades they have been sold to us as intensely romantic. These are the behaviours that are never addressed by Lily (CoHo) as something that she now realises were red flags, meant to catch her in a whirlwind romance, before the mask comes off and the abuse begins. They only adressed the first instances of physical abuse that she first brushed off and then excused. That is a well known pattern and it's approached ok'ish in my opinion, up until it got to justifying his abuse and the unforgivable coparenting situation.
@@lexie7753 thank you. I imagine it's because I've not read any of her other material. I was so mad for the entire beginning of the book because I noticed those red flags right away (literally all the things you mentioned) and hated that she was romantically interested in him. When he turned out to be abusive I thought that must have just been the point. I still think Rachel is right about a lot of the book, including and especially the marketing, the other male leads she's written (including Atlas tbh). I think I understand. Thank you for explaining (p.s. Both of your responses were great and answered my question very well) Edit: I honestly thought Lily had addressed those early red flags but it was entirely possible that I wrote that in my own brain because I had already noticed the red flags and was so relieved that Ryle turned out to be a total a**
As someone who was raised in an abusive home and had previous abusive relationships I'm glad you're talking about this and how toxic this kind of "story" is. Also- your "meh meh meh" mocking abusers and Kyra's snoring are they only way I'd sit and listen to a Colleen Hoover story.
Your talk about strangulation really hit home with me. I have been in a relationship that was very emotionally abusive, and I hadn’t realized it until one day she out right strangled me and then told me that it was my fault that it happened that I provoked her to doing that. And then made me apologize to her for honestly idk what I guess being annoying?? But as soon as that happened it was like a switch flipped and I knew I could no longer be with that person because she was legitimately dangerous. I really appreciate you talking about such topics as someone who has been in such a situation.
The bit about the garden being small is I think partly a US/UK difference. UK gardens are very often a lot smaller than a US backyard or front yard. Esp if Lily grew up in Maine, there's a lot more space for things like gardens there. You are correct she lives in Boston(?) now and that is a very large size for a big city, but based on her standards for what is normal, that is actually a pretty in character thing for her to say.
On aging the characters up in the movie: I personally think the age gap serves a point. Abusers, especially cis men, often go for much younger people, because they expect them to be less experienced, to be able to shape them in the way they want them. I knew a guy who was 44 who went for a 22yo. Gross stuff. And he made her feel small, made her feel like she wasn't worth anything, and it was a grace that he gave her the time of day. This was in a facility specifically for people with mental health issues, and NOBODY thought it was bad. Part of why I left (the other part was rampant sexual harrassment).
The names in her books makes my stomach churn. Ryle?? Is it Kyle or Ryan? That's the first red flag; that guy must have been bullied so badly that his personality must have been damaged beyond repair.
I didnt get through the whole thing, and Im pretty much halfway into the premiere right now, but after coming back from another video about this book I found out that this wasn't just a stand-alone duology. Turns out that It Ends With Us is pretty much an indirect response to the people criticising the fact that her other books have these problematic yet romanticized elements and in the comments I've seen people say things from "I dont understand the criticism" to "Its just the themes she's writing, nothing more." Like E L James, if effectively all of her novels share themes like this then its more than the writer making the book to tell a fictional story, I think its deeper than that and it makes me concerned for her, the people around her and anyone who enjoys these novels while disregarding what it could mean outside of what the author is trying to tell you
i read this book as a joke when i was 14 because girls my age would recommend it to me. looking back i remember being mad about Lily not staying with Ryle because CoHo spent half the book describing how hot and mysterious Ryle was, how he was a doctor and saved lives. The abuse that happened wasn’t portrayed as abuse and i was too young to read between the lines. I admit my 14 yr old self would’ve probably also thought Lolita was a love story but that’s exactly why Lolita is marketed towards ppl older than 18, CoHo & internet people inadvertently advertised this book to kids. What i’m trying to say is this book could be okay if it were better executed and not advertised in the young teen section of barns and nobles right next to Sherlock Holmes and Percy Jackson. + oh and also my 14 yr old self could NOT handle reading the letters to ellen because they were SO cringe. i didn’t even know ellen was a bad person at that time and i still wanted to burn the book alive every time another letter to ellen appeared. 😂
I can’t bring myself to read another Colleen Hoover book but I’m more than happy to listen to your reviews!!! I love how insightful, well spoken and detailed your videos are. And I love how you add the way your perspective has shaped the way you interpret the books!! Thank you for the content you make ♥️
i know a good handful of people with narcissistic personality disorder, and they straight up are more insulted by the people who say "narcissists can't help being abusive" or similar statements as opposed to the people who call abusers what they are. those friends of mine put in work to make sure they don't let their mental illness get the best of them and don't let it control who they are by way of therapy/etc, and to them saying that people ~just can't help it~ is an insult to those with NPD who can and do put in that work. sure, there's conversation to be had about a colloquial descriptor being the same word as a mental illness and the issues conflating them might cause, but that's a DSM issue, not an "abused person calling out the abuse they faced" issue
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on this book Rachel, and being vulnerable with your audience about your own experiences with domestic violence. From your review, it's clear Colleen Hoover didn't both with sensitivity readers! I've never read any of her books and just recently saw your review of her equally disturbing book Verity (okay that one was more disturbing with the murders) and yeah the way her sex scenes are always violent and not toeing the line well between consent and abuse is just...yuck! And how sex seems to be a stand-in for characters doing the actual work of building a relationship, it's so lazy! As an avid romance reader, the fact that her books are advertised as romance is infuriating! While romance can and does deal with difficult topics, it's premise is that there will be a Happily Ever After, and it certainly doesn't glorify any of the toxic behaviors by either Ryle or Atlas as something to look for in a partner, at least not when it's done well! Hoover's justification of Ryle's violence due to his "trauma-induced blackouts" or whatever is just vomit-inducing. Also he apparently says he's been in therapy since he was 6...well there's sitting in therapy and then there's doing the work in therapy and those are two different things! I found your discussion about how transactional relationships with abusers start to feel, with victims calculating how much abuse they can stand to "pay" for the good times they also share, particularly interesting and insightful. I've only recently stumbled upon your channel but so far I am finding your content very thoughtful, thank you for your hard work!
regarding the "stigmatising abusers"-thing people say, and that it is not their fault that they're abusers, all I can say is from personal experience, the experiences of people I know and their threapists: yes, abusers usually are traumatised, they usually have severe mental health issues, but that doesn't make any of the things they do okay. it might be the reason they are like this, but it doesn't justify it AT ALL. a bad thing being rooted in another bad thing does not somehow make it okay.
Regarding the "stigmatization of abusers": yes, absolutely, I agree that mental health, blackouts or disorders are not an excuse for abuse. People with any mental health issues CAN be good people; some just refuse to put the work in. The ONLY thing that I would add onto this (and please hear me out): I would like to, in the gentlest way possible, suggest that you don't use the term "narcissistic abuse". People with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) CAN be good people. Yes, some people with NPD are abusers, of course. Of course, their NPD doesn't make it any better, or lessen the effects of their abuse. I am NOT excusing NPD abusers. However, to insinuate that every single individual person with a particular personality disorder is automatically an abuser is not good. I say this as someone, not with NPD myself, but with people who are close to me who do, and as someone with a stigmatized personality disorder myself (BPD). And I truly hope that nobody reads this comment as an attempt to call Rachel Oats out for "stigmatizing abusers". Abuse and abusers NEED to be stigmatized; their ACTIONS, what they DO to people. A personality disorder does not. Thank you for reading if you took the time to
I loved you talking about the scorpion and the frog. I had an ex who told me this story, but it was about a snake and a fox. He told me he was a snake and I’d just end up hurt by him. When someone tells you who they are 👏please👏believe👏them! He wasn’t every physically abusive, but he was very emotionally manipulative, and I did end up hurt in the end. I am super glad you made this video, because now I don’t have to read this book, and I’m fairly certain I’ll never be tempted to read a Colleen Hoover book! I worry about the young fans who are reading these too. I think it’s hard when you’re young to know what a healthy relationship is if most of your examples come from books, TV, and movies. Stories need conflict to be interesting; no one wants to read a book or watch a show where the characters communicate all their needs and work together to meet them in a mutually satisfying way. That’s boring, so you need conflict. And that conflict either has to be external (someone/thing keeping them apart), or internal. So young people consume this media and think all good love stories have to have conflict. No, no they DO NOT! Keep up the great work Rachel.
It feels like she's trying to write something kinky but doesn't realize that that requires consent and communication. I can't say for sure why CoHo publishes stuff like this as romance, but that's my best guess
The fact that her books are so popular despite (or worse, because of) the abuse and rape apologia is so depressing. I’m glad there are people like you out there speaking up against it.
Lily Blossom Bloom and she wants to be a florist? This is worse than Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way
Hey, Ebony Darkness was following genre conventions; so basically when you think about it, the choice is legit 😊
Meaning CH is not following any trope logic and just being 😬
No amount of MCR could save CoHo’s books
Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way was so much better than… whatever this is
The first thing that came to mind was "they should be girlfriends." and a mental image of a 20-something year old Ebony shit-talking and cursing Ryle.
@@gracekelley2907Ebony Darkness would hex that man's genitals
For anyone who needs to hear this:
Abusers don't have anger problems. They don't explode because they can't control themselves. They control themselves in every situation and around every person, except one. They don't punch their boss in the face when they're upset.
They can control themselves. They just choose not to.
It's so obvious but somehow, I never really realised this before reading your comment.
This has put things in a very different perspective for me. Thank you.
They choose to bottle up their emotions and terrorize the vulnerable people around them (including unknowing strangers), because they know its difficult for them to defend themselves, leave, or they don't even expect it. These are the truly rotten cowards of society.
People with anger problems can be abusers too, though. Not all abusers are the same, except for the fact that they're all terrible.
thank u. rachel does a very poor job of explaining this, and i got so upset when she said that people that lash out on objects due to anger are bad people.
i have anger issues. it caused me so much pain as a child because people loved pushing my buttons and getting a reaction. sometimes, even now as a new adult, i get so angry that i just need to punch something.
i know that people arent to be hurt. i hate the fact that ive hurt people in the past. i feel like i have to atone for every single bad thing i do, which also aligns with something rachel says abusers do (ie when the abuser guy in the story lashed out after burning his hand and hurt lily and apologized profoundly soon after).
i think rachel is covering this issue badly, this issue real people who are more than their anger face, and it just upsets me so much.
ik the abuser guy is abusive. but hes abusive for more reasons than rachel states.
@@Keznenthanks. really needed to hear that. smile emoji.
you are completely missing the point of the comment.
I saw some girl complaining about Blake Lively, that she looked overweight and old, and this told me everything I needed to know about Colleen Hoover's readers
and imagine even thinking that about BLAKE LIVELY of all people when she’s one of the most beautiful women in the country
The kids are not alright.
She looks quite different than her peak of fame though.
@@SpecialBlanket and?
I actually complained about Blake Lively before I saw what the costume and makeup department did to her for the role because she's too naturally pretty and glamorous looking to play Lily imo. To be fair about the age thing, Blake is in her 30s. Lily is in her early to mid 20s.
Also, I don’t understand how Lily could divorce Ryle and realize how abusive he his, but still allow her child to be alone with Ryle, knowing he has violent outbursts and blackouts. Lily, what happens one day when your daughter comes to you and says, “Mommy, Daddy hit me but said it would be the last time, what should I do?” 🤨😒
Yes! THIS!
I feel like CoHo realized this and needed to cater to her younger viewers a bit in the second book. In that one, Lily refuses to let him have overnights with her and actually considers taking him to court. But her lawyer advises her to just settle outside of court and its actually painfully real imo. Ryle is going to be surgeon. He has no record, known history of violence, and comes from a good home. He would have taken Lily to court and could have gotten full custody or joint custody which is worse.
My mom did that with me and came to regret it so…I guess that’s what’ll happen.
She can't just "Not let him see her" she would have to go to court. He earns way more money, is a surgeon. Not so simple
@@xyzzyx1100 Duh, but it’s the way that Lily doesn’t care at all and is perfectly fine with it. It also gives the impression that the guy (whatever his name is, i forget) is a redeemable character and that abusers like him should be able to be with their children and that it’s perfectly fine for children to be alone with abusers since their is no pushback on the situation. I’m not critiquing Lily’s lack of resistance and not going to court in particular, but how willing she is and how she could care less about her child’s safety lol
I wish the people who defend the merits of this book realize Colleen basically just uses domestic abuse as a plot device to get lily and atlas together
I really want to know why she uses abuse in all her books. Every single Colleen Hoover book I've encountered has a male love interest that is violent or manipulative. Like, girl, you ok? They all have dumb af names too
@@Katka.Ivanova Is Colleen okay? Probably not!
@@Katka.Ivanova Well, this book was inspired by her own mother who stayed in an abusive relationship. I think Colleen understands to some degree what happens in that type of relationship but only so far as what happened in the ones she's seen. I know from personal experience that sometimes people develop a sort of tunnel vision when they have negative experiences. To them, as long as someone doesn't do that one thing or the circumstances arent almost identical it's not as bad. It sounds really weird, but it happens more than you'd think.
TWO TIMES
I always found it weird that she saw the experience of abuse in regards to her mother and then romanticized it in her writing. I know people deal with things differently but it feels gross to me personally. If she wrote books to educate on the topic, I'd respect that, but she uses it as a ploy to get the protagonists closer. It's icky.
"Ryle and Atlas get into a fistfight which is only slightly homoerotic" please never stop making book reviews I'm dying
😅lmfao
*Slightly.*
Fist-fights are inherently homoerotic. You ever watched Fight Club? Played Metal Gear Solid? Hell, in the original Olympics, people boxed bare (as in, “without protective gear” and “without clothes”.)
(I meant all of that as a joke. Seriously, though, the Olympics were wild shit, man.)
Her mom saying “you’re just too young to understand marriage” when confronted with her own abuse is GUT WRENCHING as a child who grew up in a toxic household. How dare Colleen Hoover include these extremely realistic depictions of abuse and then glamorize abusers?
Also, I am really sorry that you had to go through that. I hope that you are doing better.
This is late and I am sorry you have to go through that. I hope you are doing great now and surrounded by love.
Someone needs to get CoHo a baby name book because she comes up with some of the worst names I’ve ever ever heard in my life
She seems to find names with street signs so maybe we could crowd source her to go to New York City so we end up with characters named A, 5th, or … never mind she’d just name them Brooklyn and Lexington and Hudson like Gargoyles.
I dont get some authors aversions to just using normal names.
most of my favorite characters have pretty common, well known names. and even if they dont, they have names that had thought put into them. CoHos naming sounds like she just named them after random objects she had lying around her house and called it a day.
LITERALLY and while ‘Lily Blossom Bloom’ is simply ridiculous, I don’t even think this book has the worst ones, some of the names from her other books (such as Tate, Chastin, Crew, Layken, Caulder, among many others) make me want to roll my eyes out of my skull
@@junnakashima4552 don’t forget Leeds
@@jessicaeggertson5884actually, that would be significantly better cause Gargoyles is awesome
4:50 Weird motifs I’ve noticed in the CoHo stories:
- Aforementioned witness of death or thinking about death by female lead
- Male lead became an atheist after relative’s death and then believed in God again after seeing a hot girl
- Male lead blocks female lead from entering/exiting room
- Male lead’s voice is so sexy, it hypnotises female lead into wanting to be around him
- Scene where male lead and female lead interact in which female lead is barefoot and the male lead strokes her feet
- Flashback chapters to teenhood and/or scenes where an old diary from teenhood is read that recounts events relevant to the plot in the present day
- Female lead is most likely 23 years old (i.e. remains this age throughout or ends the story at this age)
- Non blood-related incest
- Female lead analyses male lead’s handsomeness in pore-for-pore detail
+ choking
+ women pretending to be ill or sth
+ love triangle when the cheated woman is somehow to be blamed
What up with her and age 23, as a 23yo me and my friends don’t claim her character, lol.
Is it possible the witnessing death / thinking about death opening scenes are inspired by Twilight's "I'd never given much thought to how I would die"?
Bro she was writing about 18 year old's in such a wierd way and in It Ends with us about TEENAGERS. HELL NO
So many pregnancies as well
Honeslty, I wished the author would have just made this a story about a woman getting out of an abusive relationship and left out Atlas's story. All it did was create this wish fullfillment fantasy of another man saving a woman and whisking away off into the sunset.
Coho making a female protagonist not completely reliant on men: impossible challenge
Oh god my book club read this and it was insufferable! I called it 50 shades of abuse. Absolutely terrible!
But the things which are terrible are much more interesting to read/watch etc. In fiction. Nobody says to look at fiction as a template for how to live real life. It exists for entertainment
@@KateeAngel saying fiction is just entertainment and implying it has no consequences on real life is beyond stupid, aside from demonstrably false. Many people seek relationships like these. Many people stay in toxic, abusive relationships because content like this. And fiction is not just entertainment, it is art, a form of expression, often carrying messages and parallels to real life. Truly, how could you even write such a flippant commment????? What was your objective?
@@KateeAngel Depending on the audience and the type of audience it attracted, A.k.a an audience of young adults/ teens and tackling themes of abuse, this content can and will affect people. Everyone is influenced by stuff both consciously and subconsciously, depending on the maturity of the person.
@KateeAngel the bible is fiction but yet has plenty of real life consequences
SAME
Rachel! Calling out your abuser by his full name gave me goosebumps, and I’m even tearing up! You’re a total Badass!
“She just can’t leave a womb empty can she?” Lol thank you for all your hard work Rachel ❤
I DIED when Rachel said that and had the best laugh I've had all week
This stupid story could have easily omitted the baby part and perhaps been less of a cliché. But it seems Coho looooves cliches and tropes 😂
chekhov’s womb
Someone else said: “there’s two things CoHo can’t leave empty: a woman’s womb and a father’s tomb”. 😂
The part where he reveals his childhood trauma during his ‘apology’ is exactly what my abuser did. My abuser sa’d me multiple times and each time he had a story about his own abuse as a kid. When he’d hit me or cheat on me, he came up with these outlandish stories that were completely irrelevant but they made me feel sorry for him. Instead of protecting myself he made it so I had to comfort him and then because I was comforting him, that means that conversation was over and we moved on from it. I could never bring it back up because in his eyes, I forgave him already. It was torture.
I'm sorry you went through that, but I'm glad you were able to escape and are safer now. Hope you are doing better. ❤
My abuser did that too. When I was telling him what he was doing was SA he brought it back to a story of him being SA'd by a cousin. I'm still not sure I believe his story as he focused on weird things.
Like he said a therapist knew he'd been through a lot because he has a '9 yard stare' but, he was clearly talking about his usual focused stare, which is totally different. Just doesn't sound like something a therapist would say and didn't sound applicable to him, but he brought it up to imply someone had clinically validated his experience? When responding to the fact he was abusing me in real time?
Just seemed ... weird. I don't know survivors who would approach the fact they're replicating their own abuse in such a self-serving and weird way.
Only 20 minutes in but I just wanted to say your description of the kind of man you'd like to read about in romance books made me a little teary as a guy myself. It's so easy to get caught up in trying to live up to that ideal people like Hoover write about- Tall, brooding, controlling (only acceptable if you're attractive), ripped, insanely good in bed, etc etc- you end up forgetting that there are plenty of people who's ideal guy doesn't line up with that at all. I'm a smaller dude, not very strong, my voice doesn't resonate in someone's stomach or whatever, I'm autistic and I prattle on about weird niche subjects, but I'm not an ass, I try to do good things and I love the people in my life. And someone will love me for that. I guess I just wanted to say I appreciate the reminder.
As a woman, controlling is a big NO no matter how attractive someone is. I have no desire for a man to tell me what to do, or try to be in control or 'take charge '. It's the biggest turn off there is.
Good looks can't make up for a shitty personality. Plus people have really diverse preferences. These people are just in fiction because they are conventionally attractive and slightly generic enough to reach the most viewers. Keep trucking! It's also a meme in the medical community that neurosurgeons never leave the hospitals and think they are the greatest things to ever grace this planet. The most unrealistic part of this novel was him having so much free time. lol
Good luck in life man, this was a sweet comment to read.
You are the ideal man, I’m serious
as another autistic person who also prattles on about weird niche things, someone like that is my ideal person tbh, good luck to you finding someone, 'cause i'm sure you will
but yeah, i hate how these kinds of books act like every person has the same "dream person", like we all have a "type" and it's different for everybody
As a person with children, who has always wanted children, I have to say that I've always thought of the desire as selfish in nature. It strikes me as odd when people say the opposite, that not having children is selfish. The only reason I wanted to have children is well, because I *wanted* it. I hope they end up providing a benefit to the world, that their existence is a sum positive on the balance of the universe, but that's not the reason I had them. I had kids because I wanted to. That's the whole of it.
You are so brave. So brave.
As someone who struggles with BPD and highly complex childhood trauma which I would likely carry on to my children, I put a stop on my efforts to get pregnant when I realised how selfish I was being. I wanted a family, someone to love me and not the other way around as it should be... Sometimes to end the cycle you have to become the last generation
Thank you for saying this, this is exactly my thoughts on parenthood, and for this reason I've decided to remain childless for now.
@@emilybastong3896 "sometimes to end the cycle you have to become the last generation" is such a simple statement yet so profound and oddly haunting, thank you
Can we talk about her freaking LORE DUMP when she first tells Ryle about her abusive father? Nobody talks like that in real life
Well now I’m curious about what the lore dump is, because I can say some wild shit to near strangers about my abusive father 😅
Ehhh idk as someone who has trauma dumped like that it depends on the alcohol level in the person lmao
Haha, it depends on the person. When I first met my boyfriend he trauma dumped hardcore, on our first date, but I think he did it to be as upfront as possible about what he’s gone through in life, how it affects him, etc, but it wasn’t cringey, only insightful
Same!
Blake Lively is absolutely gorgeous but I can see why people don't like the fashion choice. The clothes don't look that good.
This is just abuse fetish. A lot of teenage girls have ruminations of older men "taking control". Hence twilight etc gained so much popularity . But unfortunately the young teenagers don't take it as escapism :/
This is why it's so important for oarents to discuss proper relationships
Horny teenagers fantasising about things they don't really understand is totally normal and fine.
Having adults tell them that these things are okay is not fine
@@Ashbrash1998 Yeah but not only discuss them but be a proper example. Not sure why people think books are what should educate young girls about relationships. When a book sets you up for abuse, then a LOT has to have been going wrong up until that point. Just like social media doesn't make teenagers anorexic. It's always the social context where those ideas can thrive in the first place. People, especially caregivers, need to take responsibility because a child's tendency for self esteem develops long before they can read. They need that healthy foundation and then problematic media won't get to them as easily. Not that I'm condoning CoHo for anyone under 18 but since you can't ban books, it's best to work with that reality.
It's the result of purity culture. Girls who are told that it's wrong to consent to sex turn to r*pe fantasies at very high rates.
@@ShirumoonI think it's complicated. I wouldn't want a young teenager reading books like these because parents aren't the only influences in their kid's lives. You want to educate and model a healthy relationship while also teaching gratitude and empathy for others. But the books are popular among their friends and banning them can limit socialization with their peers. Young girls shouldn't learn about relationships from books, but books and friends and music and games are a massive influence too. Plus teenagers are hitting a developmental point where they want independence from their parents. The rules and standards they grew up with are ready to be tested while they figure out who they are and how they want to live.
The way Hoover constantly uses Atlas's homelessness as this like, way to both paint him as some sort of "lesser" person and charity case and to make Lily look like some saint for being ~the only person~ to view him as human is so disgusting and I'd be shocked if it didn't speak to her actual views about homelessness.
Nor gonna lie she gives me those vibes
I understand people loving the drama but marketing these as "romance" is so problematic. They're all abusive relationships with love interests who are trying to be redeemed but aren't. Not to mention that CoHo is a terrible person and a rape apologist. 😕
I'm sorry.. she's a WHAT NOW??
she did what? when did she do that?
@@valeriacastro2746 her son allegedly sexually assaulted someone and she defended him i believe
@@CarolineReadsbooks Highly inappropriate sexual messages from her adult son to a minor. CoHo defended him.
@@Author.Noelle.AlexandriaThat's so disgusting and disappointing.
I think the Ellen letters were an attempt to have representation without actually having to do any work. When Lily writes “sorry. Have you liked any girls “ it feels like Colleen just throwing it to be a reminder she had a queer character in her book. It feels like she put that in so people can’t complain about her complete lack of representation for any minority.
Ironically, Ellen is abusive.
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandriaabuse in her books is like breathing at this point
if that's the case that's legitimately unhinged lmfao. no rep so you just shove in a real life gay person in your dumb fiction book
The fact that people on tik tok were CRYING over this book is beyond me. People need better taste lmao.
So, about that... i went to the big book fair we have here yearly (Buenos Aires, Argentina) with a friend of mine and she was talking about books she liked when we come across this section of Colleen Hoover books that got released for the first time translated into spanish and she legit started freak-put cryimg with joy over it. The poor women working at the stand are looking at us funny (or awkward, rather) and i am just trying to comfort her because she keeps being apologetic and self aware about the whole thing (i am not good at this and the surprise factor is triggering my anxiety extra hard) so i just think i'll be a pal and buy her the book. She is completely overjoyed and can't stop gushing about the book and telling me how hard i'd relate to it what with my history both with my parents and my ex wife and all (though some comments she made about the specific things that happened did make me arch an eyebrow)... after watching this video and seeing actual quotes from it, i can confidently say i feel... concerned, shall we say, about the whole thing.
After hearing that people cried over Ugly Love which has some of the cringiest dialogue that I've ever read, i'm not surprised. CoHo fans do not have standards lol
Yet again coho books are for people who didn’t have a wattpad phase and are making up for it
You’ve just unlocked a memory of the harry styles abusive ‘I got sold to 1D’ books I used to read 😭😭😭 wattpad was a wild time
@@princessmolskiii CW: Mentions of SA
Fanfics on Wattpad were wild. I remember one where the MC was kidnapped by one direction. The other where one direction members hide a girl (MC) who was kidnapped and r*ped but escaped. Harry later r*ped the MC but then a few months or so later, forgave him because 'he had a reason' and lived happily ever after with 1D.
@@Saphia_WHAT? I knew the 1D x reader fics were weird but I didn't realize it was *that* bad
@@Saphia_ I think that’s the one I remember 😭 honestly what were we subjected to on that forsaken app
@@strangeaelurus I know. You have to read it to believe it, I guess.
There were also Dora × Trump fanfics. I was spared from those though.
You should look into Colleen Hoover’s son! Of course, only if that’s something you’d be comfortable with! I’ve read that’s he’s harassed a girl ( i can’t remember whether she was a minor or not at the time. Edit: she was 16 and he was around 21) and when the girl went to Colleen for help and proof, Colleen blocked her. It’s disgusting and needs to be talked about!
That's sickening but also makes complete sense.
I am going to be ill... holy shit!
I worked as a Librarian when TikTok popularized Colleen Hoover and I have a love-hate relationship with her books. On the one hand, I find it great it got so many people into reading. We need more people to care about books and literature. On the flip side... the books are terrible 😅
i work in a bookstore and this is the same feelings i have on BookTok as a whole. it really rejuvenated reading, especially in younger people which makes me so happy… but all the books are trash 😭
I’m not sure I’d count more people reading for these books as a good thing considering how readers internalize messages in books. If I wasn’t such a reader growing up, I wouldn’t have been into so many books that has abusers portrayed as romantic, and I might have seen that my own relationship with I was 17 was abusive. It too me five years to get away, and longer to see that I was being abused, because the best-selling books I was reading showed that behavior as romantic.
Usually more reading is good, but these are exceptions. (I don’t think we’d call an increase in reading for Mein Kampf a positive thing.) 😥
EXACTLY, I heard people in one of my classes talking about the books n I thought it was so cool that people who (of their own admission) did not read books were picking up a book and excitedly sharing it with their friends and getting everyone they knew to read it and all genuinely enjoying it
especially since I think school really turns a lot of people off reading bc of mandatory reads that are quite unappealing to the average high schooler, it's great to see people giving books a second chance and realizing that there are such things as good books that are fun to read
if only CoHo's books were actually any good 💀
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria I half-relate to this. While I have never been in a relationship, I was also an avid reader and also being a non-native speaker, my first introduction to books were the abusive male lead romances because they were easy-to-read. And those books led me to romanticize such sort of relationship dynamics. I had no concept of healthy romance and thought that the stuff the male love interest did that violated the consent of the female main character was attractive/ that meant the LI really loved and desired the MC.* I wanted my partner (regardless of their gender) to be like that because that's what I thought being loved and wanted by your partner meant. If I was in a relationship then, I wouldn't have been in a healthy relationship. And that's if my partner was not abusive. It took me several years of reading posts and comments, watching videos and reading books with healthy/ healthier relationship dynamics or books that made you uncomfortable with the abuse and/or toxicity present in them instead of romanticizing said abuse/toxicity that made me like, want and seek a healthy romantic life.
* *Examples (maybe skip to the next paragraph if examples of lack/violation of consent are not your cup of tea?)*
Over-possessiveness. Jealousy, but not the sweet kind. Kissing without prior consent and especially, kissing the MC to shut her up. Trapping the MC against the wall when she tried to escape. Saying something along the line of "Are you sure? If we go further now (while having sex), I won't be able to stop/control myself." There were more but these are the only ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Note: I didn't read physical books (didn't have the books or the money to buy them) but I read Wattpad novels. Different medium but also, I don't see much difference in Colleen's books and the easy-to-read books that were published there by mostly teens.
i did an internship at a bookstore recently and one of my coworkers was raving about coho books to a teenage girl about how they were so well written and i found that very concerning.
I feel super.. uncomfortable about the framing of Atlas' homelessness. Feels like an odd savior fantasy mixed with "oh man he's so dirty and sad". I don't care about the character himself but it does show how so many people tend to view the average homeless person. Kind of icky.
Yeah I knew quite a few kids in school who definitely didn’t have a permanent home or lived in their cars- you wouldn’t have known if they didn’t tell you.
1:45:46 i'm sorry, i didn't follow your advice and did read it and you're absolutely right, it is weird. the thing is, i'm a med student (specifically, one who has quite some experience _in an actual medical context_ with a stethoscope) and i thought i'd use my hard earned knowledge to shed some light on why this scene is incredibly stupid but also really funny for that exact reason:
- the fact that he listens to her heartbeat with the stethoscope and can easily estimate her heart rate _while he's screwing her_ is ridiculous for several reasons. first of all, if all he wanted to do is make out her heart rate, he literally could have just felt her pulse on her wrist with his own fingers (or her neck for that matter, i'm sure CoHo would have a field day with that, not that i condone it with a character like this jerk) instead of using the stupid stethoscope because the actual technique behind estimating someone's heart rate is just counting the beats within 15 seconds and multiplying that by 4 to get the beats per minute. not that he likely did that either because if you use that technique, you wouldn't easily get numbers like 110 but that's just me being petty. but yeah, unless homeboy also wanted to seductively comment on the state of her tricuspidal valve, the stethoscope was hilariously unnecessary (and probably really annoying for him, actually)
- on that note, the whole thought of estimating her pulse while they're doing the spicy tango- i'm sorry, was there a clock nearby?? was this idiot checking his watch for 15 seconds while all this was going on? you cannot tell me that he somehow managed to keep track of exactly how long of a time 15 seconds is _while_ counting her heart beats _while_ apparently "destroying her in the best possible way" like come ON 💀
- okay, now here's the funniest part: do y'all know how a stethoscope works? well i don't either, not exactly at least, but the gist of it is that the diaphragm aka the part of the stethoscope that you put on the person's body is _very sensitive_ to noise. which makes sense, of course, because it needs to amplify the noises going on in the patient's body, things like the heartbeat but also any other pathological noises anywhere in or around the heart, any noises going on in the lungs or the bronchi, peristaltic noises in the intestines (or lack thereof! also very important!) etc etc. so, this need for very reliable noise amplification results in the fact that, and i know this from personal experience, if you so much as _tap_ the stethoscope anywhere near the diaphragm, hell, even if you have like... more than two fingers at a time on the bell (round part at the bottom) while the stethoscope is in your ears, you will get your ears almost blown out. because even the slightest shake of your hands on the diaphragm will result in a really loud noise. when i'm examining someone with a stethoscope, 60% of the time are spent with adjusting my hand and finger position to make sure i get minimal noise interference so i can even _hear_ the heartbeat. now imagine this dumbass using the stethoscope while all _that_ movement is going on. and CoHo thinks he's gonna be able to hear her heartbeat? or be able to hear anything ever again in his life, for that matter??
- in addition to that, this is a bit more of a minor point: another part of reliable noise amplification in stethoscopes is that the ear tips cancel out any surrounding noise very well (that isn't coming from the bell obviously but he's already getting enough noise from there which only adds to the overall noise cancellation lmao) and i just really like the thought of Ryle thinking he's all sexy and seductive and accidentally YELLING into Lily's ear because he can't actually hear how loud his voice is. and then he tells her "shh. no noises" PLEASE THAT CLOWN
- and finally, the grand finale of stupidity, can someone tell me why, after all this nonsense has been going on, after he spent all this time trying to listen to her heartbeat in the most unnecessarily complicated way possible, at the end, he puts the _stethoscope ON HER WRIST_ ??? i fucking DIED laughing at that, i can't believe CoHo made her main love interest a doctor, not even any doctor but a _neurosurgeon_ (though, if he's still a resident as he says then i'm actually not sure if that's correct either but i can't confirm that because i'm german, who knows how american med school works lmao) and then CLEARLY didn't do enough basic research to make him anything but a stupid poser??? oh my GOD 💀💀💀
anyway that's all, i hope this was as entertaining for everyone else as it was for me, sorry for the super-long comment, the video is amazing and i'm gonna keep watching it now ❤
omg you are amazing. i laughed so much reading this
as a student nurse with minimal expertise in using a stethoscope i am horrified at this scene💀💀 i just hope he cleaned the bloody thing before using it on patients🤮
@@coolbeans5911 oh god yeah, i don't even wanna think about THAT part 😭😭
I've never laughed so hard while reading a comment.
Thank you, you are certainly a better writer than Colleen Hoover.
Thank you for writing all this. It was quite funny and was definitely worth reading... Unlike this god-awful book 😭
I am so glad someone else thought that 15 year old Lily and 18 year old Atlas dating was super weird and creepy cause while I reading that stuff I felt it was super gross but then thought I was going crazy and being overdramatic cause the book acts like it's a totally normal thing and not predatory at all.
I don't understand why they have to keep using 15/16 year olds like you can get the point across with an 18 year old and ot wouldn't be so predatory.
@@Ashbrash1998 15/16 appeals to a larger Western demographic. 16 is such a big age in American culture.
Even worse, there‘s a scene where Atlas asks Lily about her age and when he hears her answer, he looks „sad“. Does Atlas look sad because now he realises that he won’t be able to sleep with Lily (legally)?! Ew.
It didn’t bother me that much lol my boyfriend in high school was 21 I was 17 lol we dated for 4 years and it was a fun first love relationship. Teenagers are horny lol 🤷🏻♀️
from her abuser to her groomer
Books like this are what made me not aware that I was being assaulted as a child. The YA genera has so many truly concerning issues in relation to normalizing abuse :(
❤
i'm so sorry that happened to you :( i hope you're doing much better now!
I didn’t realize my first boyfriend was abusing me. I didn’t see him raping me when I was in the hospital already as rape. I was with him for five years, and it took many more years to start to see that what he did was wrong. So much of what he did was shown in popular romance books to be good. I hated it, but how could I complain if I had the “ideal” man?
@@Author.Noelle.Alexandria Not completely understanding the mechanisms of abuse when that abuse is turned onto you can be such a painful experience. I am so sorry you also had to go through something so horrendous by someone else’s hands. Even when people hurt you if that behavior has been ignored or (like in this book) even romanticized it can make finding and identifying healthy and unhealthy traits murky territory. I so wish something would change about the representation of sa in media so that kids and young adults could more easily identify what is healthy and implement boundaries much earlier and easier on.
For example I used to describe assault on my playground (at school) as just “bullying” for 20 yrs because I didn’t know to call it anything else. But no one wears a one piece bathing suit under their clothes for a year so no one can touch them because they were just “bullied”. If so many of us only knew the extent of our abuse earlier maybe we could have acknowledged why it hurt us and how to heal sooner💞 wishing you and anyone else affected similarly so so so much unyielding happiness💞
@@ivy7417 Ty for your kindness 💞 and thankfully I’ve been doing much better:) I also wish you well💞🍀
One of the most stupid things about this book is that we're supposed to believe that Ryle starts off as being a kind and loveable man with whom Lily and the reader fall in love with. But, his abusive and manipulative tendencies are slowly revealed until it becomes clear that he is an abuser. The thing is that, from the beginning of the book, Ryle is already portrayed as an abusive and manipulative man. We are introduced to his character when Lily finds him kicking a chair out of anger, witch is very concerning. Later on, he begs and successfully coerces Lily into having sex with him, solely because he wants to. Also, he gives stalker vibes, showing up everywhere Lily was and even had a giant picture of her that he took the night they met on the wall of his sister apartment (they weren't even dating at this point, and even if they were, that's creepy). He was a 🚩FROM THE BEGINNING, not just when him and Lily got married!
Yeah, the red flags are so apparent if you look. That being said, I mostly just found him boring, cringe, and Wattpad before the abuse came into play. Especially since the flashbacks are the best part at first and Atlas was much better even as a teenager. I was actually warming up to Ryle when they were cooking together but then he hit her.
It's entertaining but also extremely concerning that CoHo accidentally wrote accurate red flags when trying to write a charming love interest
I found this book ridiculous as well. But when I read it I took it as the author displaying obvious red flags that might not be recognized by someone young or naive. Like she wrote him shitty from the start but still had women loving him cus muscles, charm, wealth, ext. And then after his first obvious display of abuse you can go back and realize he was shitty from the beginning.
I thought that was the point? How someone might miss these red flags. Not her writing the perfect heartthrob and him flipping a switch one day. She’s showing the warning signs
If I remember correctly two things. Her father goes after him with a baseball bat, and it's not mentioned for pages, and when Ryle shoves her down the stairs and knocks her unconscious, she’s like oh. well.
i don't think that's ridiculous. narcissistic abusers come off very charming and exciting in the beginning. how do you think they lure in their victims? it's common to think that someone who has an "edge" like that is sexy or dangerous, but YOU'LL be the exception. lily wasn't, clearly, and i wish she'd figured that out sooner. the book needed to deal more with that realization. abusers don't have "exceptions." if they want to get better, they have to work on THEMSELVES. and that's just... not common or easy with these types of personalities.
This is Alizee levels of masochistic reading
We thank you for your sacrifice Rachel! Now go cuddle with Kyra 😂
Add in that rachel edited some of alizee's CH videos, which means she's watched the content multiple times 😮
I thankfully didn’t edit her video back when she spoke about this book so this was my first intro to this book, but since Alizee’s currently working on her own video about Verity, we’ve been talking about Hoover far too much and I’m so tired! 😂
@@RachelOates christ it sounds like you need a pallet cleanser sooner rather than later 😅
@@RachelOates both of you need a vacation after so much colleen hoover content o7
*Lilly Evergreen* could have been a better name than Lilly Blossom Bloom. But maybe her parents were hippies? 🤔
How many blunts did her parents smoke before she was born?
@@LakinMae5all of them
@@Punk-possuminconsiderately so!
@@Punk-possum wheezing rn my god 💀💀
People say you're too unforgiving of abusers? ABUSERS? I hope they never realize how being in that situation changes you. Learning not to excuse abuse is HARD.
Normally I don't have a problem getting through your videos. I had to watch this in 2 parts. There are specific elements of abuse my ex used against me, and it just hit me how much I excused. I'm glad I got out when I did.
If you meet a guy and he immediately does 3 plus antisocial things: breaks someone else's property, stares at you inappropriately, and says something inappropriate, (i want to f you) consider that he might have antisocial personality disorder; not that he is a deep, complicated, datable man.
10000% sociopathic
It's quite inappropriate to diagnose people with mental illness like that...
ASPD is waaaay more than just not being prosocial. It's complex and serious and this comment is legit insulting. That's like saying if you see someone cry they must have BPD. I've been w someone w ASPD for 13 years (yeahhhh can't wait til more is known about it than "and they're really a hassle to everyone else", it's way more internal and fucked up than that)
Disclaimer though, I do discourage the general population from dating people that have ASPD and are so bad at controlling it that they got dx'd.
okay, having watched this longer-- lol, a lot of neurosurgeons do have aspd and this character does kinda seem like he does.
I’m a fairly tall and large woman so I have a touch of built in scary dog privilege. I might not leave a rooftop if a man came, but if he started to break shit I would get the fuck out
My RBF and "fuck off" aura tends to serve me well but yea, same @ booking the fuck out lol
Like, I have better things to do than to get into an altercation for no damn reason.
Colleen Hoover exclusively writes women who are entirely defined by the men in their lives but hides that fact under a veneer of sass and pick me energy. They always have jobs associated with femininity and they always end up pregnant. Colleen must have never been outside of her privileged, femme bubble, and her blatant breeding kink is making it so much worse. But it's not just a one sided view of women, she only ever writes the exact same men. It is honestly pathetic and I feel Hoover needs to meet more people beyond the same archetypes.
Also can we stop fetishizing wealth? Why is it always neurosurgeons and not just a male nurse or a janitor at a hospital? Men with smaller incomes can still be desirable. I am not a woman but was raised as one before I transitioned and I find it insulting to insinuate all women want is a dude with a fat wallet and no personality besides anger issues and trauma.
true, there's nothing wrong with having a "feminine" job but when she writes literally every character to be like that you know it's because she has some things internalized.
she always writes both men and women in the most stereotypical way, it almost feels like weird parody of a bad romance novel, she writes exactly like what you imagine when you imagine a bad romance novel in your mind, but she's entirely serious and it's wild
"You don't need to have nearly died for it to be abuse" so, so grateful for your commentary in this video. I'm in the process of divorcing my abuser and have been struggling with describing my experiences as abuse because they never involved extreme violence. Thank you so much for your openness and honesty in sharing your story ❤️
Honestly, normalizing age gaps like that makes me personally nervous for the people who - like myself - will think it’s somehow glamorous and it means the “younger person is so mature and special.” That line of thinking had me at 18 dating a 29 year old man who emotionally, mentally, and (eventually) physically abused me for 3 years. It’s gross to have authors or other people in media painting it as a romantic or whatever, because it isn’t.
THIS. Older people don't want them so they prey on young people.
In my experience, I've always found older men attractive. I don't for one minute believe I was ever groomed or abused by any of the people older than me that I've hooked up with. Everything was of my own volition. You can say that you don't like big age gaps, but I legit hate this infantilization of 18-26 year olds.
Colleen's possible elevator pitch for this book: It's a commentary on domestic violence partially based on my mother's experiences. Oh, and the protagonist is also a florist named Lily Blossom Bloom who writes letters to Ellen DeGeneres and names her children after Pixar characters
Wot.😶🌫️
I am so fucking tired of the narrative that not having children is selfish.
As someone who wants them I think it’s actually the opposite of selfish. You’re not brining a random child into the world when you know you wouldn’t love them or couldn’t take care of them, like so many do. It’s a win win for everyone. No child deserves you as a parent if you don’t even want them and you don’t deserve to be pressured into having one if it wouldn’t make you happy.
Mental health disorders can explain abuser's behavior, but not excuse it.
People with mental illness are still responsible for their actions. Believing otherwise is dehumanizing to those with mental illness.
I'm at the point where youre reading that bit where he begs her to have sex with him and he says, "Please, I'm really good at it." I'm actually in tears and halfway choking laughing. I have asthma. Help.
It sound so patheticccc how is that supposed to be romantic 😭😭😭
Audibly said "what the fuck" and woke my kitten up
Please, I'm really good at it? 😂😂😂 oh the cringe factor is OFF THE CHARTS
Hoover's belief that you just need to find "the one" to be happy is highkey insulting as an angled aroace person.
Yes and anyone not interested in codependency
Angled? I know what aroace means but have never the angled thing
@Liz basically it means that either one or both of my identities are on the aromantic/asexual spectrum, rather than strictly being aroace.
For me I'm grayromantic and asexual.
@@SkySpiral8 And anyone genuinely healthy enough to have an adequate level of independence. "Finding the one and be happy" can be really misguiding and I'm saddened that people like Hoover still pushes such an agenda.
@@MagisterialVoyager Yes, I agree. Before the romantic age of the 1800s, even western culture would have thought such a level of emotional codependency was absolutely ridiculous.
homeboy just going to her house and taking off his clothes and making himself at home has big Gaston vibes.
Somehow I feel like Coleen Hoover would be one of those people on the Internet trying to justify that Gaston 'wasn't actually all that bad, really' (or would be if she was on the Internet at a slightly earlier time)
I immediately thought of Gaston when he was introduced
Apologies for the terrible camera quality in this - I used the wrong lens and it was too late to change it by the time I realised, it was getting super late, I was ridiculously tired. I then had 24 hours of absolute hell attempting to export this. I feel like everything that COULD have gone wrong with this video, DID go wrong. Ugh.
If you'd like some recommendations for fictional books which deal with similar topics (although not specifically DV) in a sensitive way I'd recommend My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell and The Girls of Summer - Katie Bishop. They're not only incredibly well-written but both show how these kinds of men can be so convincing that even their victims don't realise what is happening to them but at the same time, neither book ever glamourises or condones their behaviour. THIS is how you deal with these topics sensitively.
Affiliate links to get these books:
My Dark Vanessa - Kate Elizabeth Russell
UK: amzn.to/43OOUmp
USA: amzn.to/3P5Wmos
The Girls of Summer - Katie Bishop
UK: amzn.to/3JaBkkN
USA: amzn.to/43UUmnm
I'd also recommend Dr Ramani's book Should I Stay or Should I Go? because this is the book which helped me leave my ex and saved my life.
UK: amzn.to/45WWpJg
USA: amzn.to/3p13esG
Resources:
Rape Crisis (England and Wales) bit.ly/3N64bIg
Refuge www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/
SurvivorsUK www.survivorsuk.org
Domestic Violence Hotline USA www.thehotline.org/
Everything is fine. Meaning.....the video was very enjoyable (as enjoyable as Coleen Hoover book reviews can be). Sorry it gave you so much pain.
Camera quality was great your so hard on yourself to give us the best content! Always look forward to your videos
Camera Quality was good! I suppose the quality change is noticeable if you go from your last video to this one, but it's not something I noticed while watching. Sucks that you had so much trouble with the video though.
This may be something you noticed while editing though, but I will say that the oven's clock flashing in the corner was fairly distracting once I noticed it. Maybe the camera position from the last video was adjusted slightly since and it didn't cut it off frame in this video.
Don't apologize for putting out any type of well-researched free content!
thank you for your hard work, Rachel!
Half way through the book i genuinely thought that the book was a romance. I feel like if there wasnt the lore dump at the begining and having flashbacks through the ellen letters would have changed the tune because then we would be able to see the paralleles. Also i would like to thank you because when i was 12 it was youtubers like you that taught me that abuse is not romance. Im 15 now and have never been in a situation where i would need to have known that. But i am still grateful that i know the signs of abuse just incase, god forbid, i am ever in that situation. So thank you.
Starting the story in Maine is only acceptable for Stephen King horror novels and the Iron Giant
Jesus. I’ve always said my boyfriend’s ex sounded abusive but the parallels I heard from your experiences really solidified that for me. Thankfully, he was never in a position where he feared for his life, but she screamed, hit, and pushed him all while telling him he’d never find a happy relationship without “fights” like that, for six years. Thank you for sharing your experiences and pointing out everything about this book!!!
The only way "lily blossom bloom who wants to be a florist" could be in any way not uncool would be if she was a trans girl naming herself after flowers. Tho people who end up choosing new names tend to have better taste and pick names that sound good together:P
She has a my little pony name
Rachel, I don't know if you'll ever see this, but I wanted to thank you for speaking about your relationship with your brother. My sister had very bad anger issues growing up, and she took them out on me and my younger sister. My parents were extremely codependent and never did anything to help me. It feels like no one talks about or takes seriously abuse between siblings, so many people talk as if it is normal for older siblings to bully their younger siblings, and it hurts to constantly have my experience minimized. So thank you for making me feel less alone in my pain.
I'm so sorry you went through that too ♥
I love the razor glove analogy ❤
Edit:
We have huge yards/gardens in the USA 😅 if you don't live in a huge city, having a big yard is not necessarily a sign of wealth
And one of my classmates wanted me to read it...
Don't think I will, if not to physically and psychologically hurt myself.
And also, Coleen Hoover wanted to do a COLORING BOOK of this novel.
Oh I remember that and how people were defending the decision
The line "you're not responsible for your trauma but you are responsible for traumatizing others" rings very true here
Knowing that the book is based on her Mother is really uncomfortable when you consider all the flashbacks. It feels like…torture p0rn.
I can't get over the fact that this book is supposed to be a tribute to Colleen Hoover's mother and she named the character based on her Lily Blossom Bloom and she owns a flower shop. 😂
Does…does she like her mother? Is this entire book maybe secretly a slight to her mother by writing shitily and being ‘oh yes I dedicate this book to YOU mom’ as a joke but someone took her seriously and published it?
@justvibinginouterdarkness1929 I think she internalized a verrrry warped view of abuse relationships from her mother and I think her books are very indicative of that.
I feel like some of these books with horribly controlling male characters are written by authors who find being dominated sexy and they would really benefit from a healthy dom-sub relationship. Then, maybe they could write about that! Like I get handing over control and how titillating that can feel, but my god, that has to be in the context of tremendous trust. And trust is earned through direct communication, respect of boundaries, and just generally caring about the person you are dominating. This character is NOT doing that.
the best depiction of dv I’ve seen in a romance novel (which focuses on an actual romantic relationship that doesn’t include the abuser) is still ‘blue eyed devil’ by lisa kleypas. it illustrates just how normalized and deceptive dv can be and how difficult the recovery is, but also how finding the right partner, who can support and heal you from within, is absolutely possible and what every woman deserves. re-reading it recently only enforced my absolute abhorrence for this trash, colleen hoover, and the legions of idiotic fans who continue to support her and the book.
Always blows my mind how open and honest you are about your past on here. You are so incredibly brave and strong for sharing your story to try and help others ❤❤
When you said "I'm stronger now, I got this" I genuinely teared up. You are *so* strong, Rachel, and though I am just a stranger to you, I am really proud of you for everything you have grown to be. Your character, kindness, strength, the work you do, and the way you are unapologetic about standing up for yourself and others, is the makings of just the very best kind of human. Plus, you and Kyra are the absolute cutest. Thanks for another great video
The fact that were supposed to swooning over this supposedly charismatic lady killer and then he starts begging for sex has me cackling
I like that you help normalize this complex topic by sharing your story. Someone that's been on the on the receiving end of mental and physical abuse I can relate. And having "i told you so, if you only listened..., we knew it ..." that hurt's so bad. Leaving with I love your content.
My friends and I have a "book club" they chose this. I HATED IT. It was painful for me to finish it. The worst part for me was that it was very predictable and even though, the main character was in a horrible situation, the writting didnt take me "there". 😅
Me and my friends have a book club as well. I am so glad that the only romance stuff we read are those over the top, sold at the supermarket, made for women in their 40s romances with the paintings of muscular, longhaired men on the cover. They are sometimes problematic as well but so badly written and established, you just know they are only there for the smut and no one would ever take them seriously. Reading them is really funny.
I would have straight up refused to read something from CH...
Alizee was right! It’s not a CoHo book unless a man stands in the doorway blocking a woman in a room.
It's so fucking anime lol
This is probably a weird comment to leave on a video like this, but Alizee and Rachel are the manifestation of foil characters. You can feel the bestie energy. 🖤
Kyras cute snoring is what made me able to sit through the heavy topics. The piggy bean comes through for us all! ❤
I’m so sorry you had to suffer like that, and so glad you survived ❤. Thank you for openly talking about it, it’s so important to learn to identify abuse!
That said, I loved how fed up you were with the characters. The amount of times you said “stop it” 😂 this is such bad writing that I can’t even think people like it as a guilty pleasure...
EDIT: I'm so glad you're in such a better place and time in your life. You're always so kind and soft-spoken in your videos despite all the stuff you've talked about going through and continue to go through and it's always so frustrating when you bring this stuff up because you didn't and don't deserve to have gone through that. (Not that anybody does, really, but I think you get my point.)
I started the video and then you mentioned how long it was and then I checked it I was like "yep! Gotta leave a like first thing to help the algorithm!" I probably would have done so anyways because I love your content, but that just made me do it immediately. Knowing you, a video this long either means the thing you're going over is really good or really REALLY bad...
That's me as well. I leave a like before even starting the video because I know Rachel's opinions are going to be nuanced.
Thank you both ♥️♥️♥️
I am someone who had zero intention of reading this book, but I wanted to participate in the conversation surrounding the film right now, so I canned the whole book yesterday. It was … not good, and this video demonstrates the reasons beautifully. I’ve read fan fiction that has better prose and discusses domestic violence better. I’d LOVE a full update video discussing the marketing. ❤
Wow how special and revolutionary to name your character after …. Wait for it 😮 … Leeds (a town in England, thanks for explaining that Colleen lol) MY GOD, everything she does is CRINGE. I’m so tired of her male love interests and tired of mediocre at best writers getting book deals infinitely and even a movie 😭
As someone who lives in leeds, that
in particular just kills me 😭
@@RachelOates I'm from Leeds and it's really weird to read
How does someone who bLaCkS oUt in unConTrolLabLe anger get into medical school, much less a surgical residency ?? He’d never gonna make it through a neurosurgery fellowship smh it’s almost like that’s 100% bs
Or anything before the start of the damn course to begin with lol.
I mean, I don't even know how this person made it through high school to begin with.
What you said about enthusiastically wanting to be with someone really hit home. In my personal experience, some people (myself included, I’ve been there as well) tend to go through a phase where they just want to be in a relationship so bad that they deceive themselves into thinking a bad match will work no matter what, that either themselves or the other person will change their mind overtime if you just “give it enough time”. But I find that that rarely ever happens because you’re forcing emotions to work where they should naturally grow, and it could result in either parties becoming inauthentic versions of themselves just for the sake of a relationship that was built on faulty foundation to begin with. Scary part is that if you lie to yourself about an unsuitable relationship long enough, you’ll begin to believe that lie. In short, it just leads to heartbreak 9 times out of 10
My abusive rapist ex wasn't weirdly close to his mom, but his older brother (also an abusive rapist, just not to me) was. Their mom literally ignored his victim telling her what happened. They both had explosive rage issues like Ryle, too.
Rachel, your work ethic is phenomenal. Thank you for reading, researching, probably some form of scripting, filming, editing and uploading 3+ hour long videos that are incredibly important, full of substance and high quality. I just want you to know it doesn’t go unnoticed, and wanted to praise your efforts as well as your intelligence and talents. Your videos are truly gems.
i don’t know how i stumbled upon and became a subscriber to rachel. but i do know that because of her channel, i’ve found a whole new genre of youtube which is book reviews. i never thought i’d be the type of person to watch MULTIPLE hours long book reviews, but here i am! i’d listen to these if they were a podcast as well.
Ahhhhh thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying! :)
thank you for talking about DV as openly as you do. i have a lonnnng history of emotional/psychological abuse from my parents and previous partners and for me it's always felt like the big elephant in the room. like i'm some weird damaged girl who's been abused. so thank you for normalizing these types of experiences, it's very helpful for making me not feel like an alienated freak.
"I don't like how much I think about you. Which isn't all that much" Yeah that just screams that someone is romantically interested in you. It comes off as more of a dig at someone who you don't like at all than something you say to a person you're attracted to
What you said about abusers who strangle being more likely to kill is really scary. My sister's ex was arrested for strangling his new girlfriend in front of her child. My sister's ex was never physically abusive to her, as far as I know, but he's been abusive to her in other ways. He yells and screams at her, he calls her names, he uses their 6 year old son to hurt or control her, he's extremely manipulative and mentally/emotionally abusive to their son, he's even drugged my sister with molly twice thinking it would make her have sex with him.
My sister has a new boyfriend now. She's been with her new boyfriend for almost a year. This has made her ex act even worse. My sister's ex still goes back and forth from being cruel as he can, to love bombing and trying to get back with her. I'm always worried about my sister. Now that I've heard what you said about abusers who stangle being more likely to kill, I'm even more afraid for my sister. She can't just disappear and never have anything to do with her ex, because they have a kid together. The cops have been useless. They wouldn't even do a restraining order. Salt Lake City, Utah doesn't care about poor women at all.
Colleen Hoover writes characters like men write women
I almost bought this book to bring along for my Summer holiday...happy I did not, the cliches, the normalization of abuse and all wrapped in pretty pink floral branding makes me uncomfortable!
If I ever were to write a book, there is only one person I'd want to edit and/or review it; rants with Rachel, I know it would be better for it!
Ok ok ok, imma need to rant a little bit about this cause damn, I have very intense feelings. So I read this book after having it presented to me as "a very nuanced and realistic take on domestic abuse". I hadn't read any CoHo books before and in the first part I was like oh, look at all these red flags.
The book is kinda cringe but I get it, it's setting it up as Lily missed all the red flags of him being manipulative, obsessive and controlling. But after the abuse started I realised that oh no no no, that was supposed to be the romantic part with absolutely 0 flags. WTF???
I have since hate-read 4 more CoHo books and know that's how she writes "romance". Listen, please don't judge me, I'm trying to be a romance/ya writer and it was a misguided attempt to understand what is popular (at first), and then it became me researching what NOT to do.
Ok so back to this book. The fact that it ends with a man that has rage blackouts being entrusted with raising a child, makes me want to punch some walls myself. I understand that it's CoHo's own story, and her dad was great to her although abusive to her mother bla bla bla but ffs, it's so irresponsible. The chance that a man like that WON'T abuse their child is slim to none.
Ooooh don't even get me started on the attempts to justify his monstrous behaviour. I can't. I just, I can't. I'm not for book banning but by all that is holy, if I were, CoHo books would be the prime candidates for that. It straight up grooms a whole new generation of young women to fall pray to abusive relationships.
Ok rant over, sorry.
Exactly how I feel.
Can you explain where you got the idea that Hoover wasn't making the point of Lily missing red flags? Because I genuinely finished the book thinking that was the whole point. I left off with the message that entering an abusive relationship is not your fault, specifically because of the red flags at the beginning. I was under the impression that was the point of the book: to show how easy it is to dismiss red flags and excuse bad behavior. I saw this as an important narrative to show the readers that 1. If you're in or have been in an abusive relationship, it's not and never was your fault, and 2. Behavior and red flags that we've been conditioned to accept and excuse are actually not okay and should not be ignored. It seems you started with that message and changed your mind later. I actually did the opposite where I started off hating it and changed my mind when Lily saw how Ryle had manipulated her in the beginning. So I'm genuinely curious what you saw that I didn't. Im not disagreeing with you. Just feel like I missed something.
@@alexhilton2259 I mean yeah, you're probably missing something if you haven't read other Colleen Hoover books. If you had, like I did (unfortunately bleah) you would realise that Ryle's red flags are presented as romantic in all of her other books. All of them. Some more horrific than others but all nonetheless. They feature pushy and controlling men, insta-love (love bombing), men confining women to spaces (blocking doors) as "foreplay", men being sexually pushy as "foreplay", violent outbursts as signs of "passion". There is virtually no difference between Ryle and CoHo's other leading men, up until the first time he physically hurts Lilly. Hence, to me and plenty of other ppl all these things read as something that CoHo thinks is part of the romance.
But even without reading other books, I distinctly got the feeling that Ryle was painted out to be the perfect guy, until he hit her. That what we can clearly see is a red flag, should be considered romantic in CoHo's mind. I hadn't read any other CoHo books so I don't know exactly how I could tell. Just, something was missing for it to be meant to be perceived as manipulation and red flags. And again, once I read a few more books I realised that yes, that is EXACTLY how she writes romance. To the point where there's a whole genre here on yt reading her books live, and people being horrified by how every male protagonist is a red flag at best and an emotionally abusive ahole at worst (I'm looking at you Ugly Love). Don't know if that clears things up but I hope it does.
But that being said, I'm truly happy for anyone that got a good message from this books though. Just, maybe... not raising a child with a man that has rage blackouts. That's never a good message and I would know, as the child that was at the other end of such lovely parental displays, and barely made it out alive.
@@alexhilton2259 Ok I realised I may have gotten carried away by my hatred for this book and didn't really properly answered your question. Ok so to me it boils down to this. You said you "changed your mind when Lily saw how Ryle had manipulated her in the beginning". To me, this was never addressed. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, it's been a while since I read, but the only behaviour that was addressed as wrong was when he first hit her, in the kitchen, and then twisted the situation as an accident. That was, indeed, manipulation. But to me the actual red flags are:
- him knocking on every door in her building to find her
- him being obsessed with having sex with her, after minimal interaction
- him being jealous that she brought someone else to the party, separating her from the crowd and blocking her from leaving
- him being all "addicted" to her after the first time they had sex
- him moving extremely fast
We now have the tools to identify these behaviours as red flags and precursors to an abusive relationship, although for decades they have been sold to us as intensely romantic. These are the behaviours that are never addressed by Lily (CoHo) as something that she now realises were red flags, meant to catch her in a whirlwind romance, before the mask comes off and the abuse begins. They only adressed the first instances of physical abuse that she first brushed off and then excused. That is a well known pattern and it's approached ok'ish in my opinion, up until it got to justifying his abuse and the unforgivable coparenting situation.
@@lexie7753 thank you. I imagine it's because I've not read any of her other material. I was so mad for the entire beginning of the book because I noticed those red flags right away (literally all the things you mentioned) and hated that she was romantically interested in him. When he turned out to be abusive I thought that must have just been the point. I still think Rachel is right about a lot of the book, including and especially the marketing, the other male leads she's written (including Atlas tbh). I think I understand. Thank you for explaining (p.s. Both of your responses were great and answered my question very well)
Edit: I honestly thought Lily had addressed those early red flags but it was entirely possible that I wrote that in my own brain because I had already noticed the red flags and was so relieved that Ryle turned out to be a total a**
Cant wait. I just came out of a marriage with DV when I read this book and it made me sick.
Glad you got out! 💙💙
As someone who was raised in an abusive home and had previous abusive relationships I'm glad you're talking about this and how toxic this kind of "story" is. Also- your "meh meh meh" mocking abusers and Kyra's snoring are they only way I'd sit and listen to a Colleen Hoover story.
Your talk about strangulation really hit home with me. I have been in a relationship that was very emotionally abusive, and I hadn’t realized it until one day she out right strangled me and then told me that it was my fault that it happened that I provoked her to doing that. And then made me apologize to her for honestly idk what I guess being annoying?? But as soon as that happened it was like a switch flipped and I knew I could no longer be with that person because she was legitimately dangerous. I really appreciate you talking about such topics as someone who has been in such a situation.
i'm convinced that colleen hoover actually has serious trauma, bc how is miss girl writing these "love stories" and thinking that they're normal?? 😭😭
I read somewhere the book was inspired by her mother’s experience with domestic violence
The bit about the garden being small is I think partly a US/UK difference. UK gardens are very often a lot smaller than a US backyard or front yard. Esp if Lily grew up in Maine, there's a lot more space for things like gardens there. You are correct she lives in Boston(?) now and that is a very large size for a big city, but based on her standards for what is normal, that is actually a pretty in character thing for her to say.
On aging the characters up in the movie: I personally think the age gap serves a point. Abusers, especially cis men, often go for much younger people, because they expect them to be less experienced, to be able to shape them in the way they want them. I knew a guy who was 44 who went for a 22yo. Gross stuff. And he made her feel small, made her feel like she wasn't worth anything, and it was a grace that he gave her the time of day. This was in a facility specifically for people with mental health issues, and NOBODY thought it was bad. Part of why I left (the other part was rampant sexual harrassment).
yes! can’t get enough of your long-form content, especially your incisive critique of terrible books. also that dress is gorgeous!
The names in her books makes my stomach churn. Ryle?? Is it Kyle or Ryan? That's the first red flag; that guy must have been bullied so badly that his personality must have been damaged beyond repair.
I didnt get through the whole thing, and Im pretty much halfway into the premiere right now, but after coming back from another video about this book I found out that this wasn't just a stand-alone duology. Turns out that It Ends With Us is pretty much an indirect response to the people criticising the fact that her other books have these problematic yet romanticized elements and in the comments I've seen people say things from "I dont understand the criticism" to "Its just the themes she's writing, nothing more."
Like E L James, if effectively all of her novels share themes like this then its more than the writer making the book to tell a fictional story, I think its deeper than that and it makes me concerned for her, the people around her and anyone who enjoys these novels while disregarding what it could mean outside of what the author is trying to tell you
i read this book as a joke when i was 14 because girls my age would recommend it to me. looking back i remember being mad about Lily not staying with Ryle because CoHo spent half the book describing how hot and mysterious Ryle was, how he was a doctor and saved lives. The abuse that happened wasn’t portrayed as abuse and i was too young to read between the lines. I admit my 14 yr old self would’ve probably also thought Lolita was a love story but that’s exactly why Lolita is marketed towards ppl older than 18, CoHo & internet people inadvertently advertised this book to kids. What i’m trying to say is this book could be okay if it were better executed and not advertised in the young teen section of barns and nobles right next to Sherlock Holmes and Percy Jackson.
+ oh and also my 14 yr old self could NOT handle reading the letters to ellen because they were SO cringe. i didn’t even know ellen was a bad person at that time and i still wanted to burn the book alive every time another letter to ellen appeared. 😂
I can’t bring myself to read another Colleen Hoover book but I’m more than happy to listen to your reviews!!! I love how insightful, well spoken and detailed your videos are. And I love how you add the way your perspective has shaped the way you interpret the books!! Thank you for the content you make ♥️
i know a good handful of people with narcissistic personality disorder, and they straight up are more insulted by the people who say "narcissists can't help being abusive" or similar statements as opposed to the people who call abusers what they are. those friends of mine put in work to make sure they don't let their mental illness get the best of them and don't let it control who they are by way of therapy/etc, and to them saying that people ~just can't help it~ is an insult to those with NPD who can and do put in that work. sure, there's conversation to be had about a colloquial descriptor being the same word as a mental illness and the issues conflating them might cause, but that's a DSM issue, not an "abused person calling out the abuse they faced" issue
They should be banning these kind of books not the lgbt-friendly ones 😂😂😂
Thank you so much for sharing your perspective on this book Rachel, and being vulnerable with your audience about your own experiences with domestic violence. From your review, it's clear Colleen Hoover didn't both with sensitivity readers! I've never read any of her books and just recently saw your review of her equally disturbing book Verity (okay that one was more disturbing with the murders) and yeah the way her sex scenes are always violent and not toeing the line well between consent and abuse is just...yuck! And how sex seems to be a stand-in for characters doing the actual work of building a relationship, it's so lazy! As an avid romance reader, the fact that her books are advertised as romance is infuriating! While romance can and does deal with difficult topics, it's premise is that there will be a Happily Ever After, and it certainly doesn't glorify any of the toxic behaviors by either Ryle or Atlas as something to look for in a partner, at least not when it's done well! Hoover's justification of Ryle's violence due to his "trauma-induced blackouts" or whatever is just vomit-inducing. Also he apparently says he's been in therapy since he was 6...well there's sitting in therapy and then there's doing the work in therapy and those are two different things! I found your discussion about how transactional relationships with abusers start to feel, with victims calculating how much abuse they can stand to "pay" for the good times they also share, particularly interesting and insightful. I've only recently stumbled upon your channel but so far I am finding your content very thoughtful, thank you for your hard work!
You are truly doing God's work with these books lol. The amount of normalization of abusive behavior in the romance genre is terrifying.
regarding the "stigmatising abusers"-thing people say, and that it is not their fault that they're abusers, all I can say is from personal experience, the experiences of people I know and their threapists: yes, abusers usually are traumatised, they usually have severe mental health issues, but that doesn't make any of the things they do okay. it might be the reason they are like this, but it doesn't justify it AT ALL. a bad thing being rooted in another bad thing does not somehow make it okay.
When it comes to abused abusers, their trauma is an explanation but not an excuse.
Regarding the "stigmatization of abusers": yes, absolutely, I agree that mental health, blackouts or disorders are not an excuse for abuse. People with any mental health issues CAN be good people; some just refuse to put the work in. The ONLY thing that I would add onto this (and please hear me out): I would like to, in the gentlest way possible, suggest that you don't use the term "narcissistic abuse". People with NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) CAN be good people. Yes, some people with NPD are abusers, of course. Of course, their NPD doesn't make it any better, or lessen the effects of their abuse. I am NOT excusing NPD abusers. However, to insinuate that every single individual person with a particular personality disorder is automatically an abuser is not good.
I say this as someone, not with NPD myself, but with people who are close to me who do, and as someone with a stigmatized personality disorder myself (BPD). And I truly hope that nobody reads this comment as an attempt to call Rachel Oats out for "stigmatizing abusers". Abuse and abusers NEED to be stigmatized; their ACTIONS, what they DO to people. A personality disorder does not.
Thank you for reading if you took the time to
I loved you talking about the scorpion and the frog. I had an ex who told me this story, but it was about a snake and a fox. He told me he was a snake and I’d just end up hurt by him. When someone tells you who they are 👏please👏believe👏them! He wasn’t every physically abusive, but he was very emotionally manipulative, and I did end up hurt in the end.
I am super glad you made this video, because now I don’t have to read this book, and I’m fairly certain I’ll never be tempted to read a Colleen Hoover book!
I worry about the young fans who are reading these too. I think it’s hard when you’re young to know what a healthy relationship is if most of your examples come from books, TV, and movies. Stories need conflict to be interesting; no one wants to read a book or watch a show where the characters communicate all their needs and work together to meet them in a mutually satisfying way. That’s boring, so you need conflict. And that conflict either has to be external (someone/thing keeping them apart), or internal. So young people consume this media and think all good love stories have to have conflict. No, no they DO NOT!
Keep up the great work Rachel.
It feels like she's trying to write something kinky but doesn't realize that that requires consent and communication. I can't say for sure why CoHo publishes stuff like this as romance, but that's my best guess
The fact that her books are so popular despite (or worse, because of) the abuse and rape apologia is so depressing. I’m glad there are people like you out there speaking up against it.