Reviews with content warning for Rape - Jamais Plus

the way that lily acts towards ryle when he claims he would change made me extremely mad, like leave him permanently!! but overall it was a rollercoaster of emotions and made me EXTREMELY tense during some parts and those are the kind of books that i LOVE. it displays acts of physical abuse from spouses/partners and also tells you options on what to do. i love how this book displays what some women/men have to go through. according to me overall, i give this book a perfect 5 according to the storyline and pace! (took me 3 nights to read it whole because of how the book had me CLINGING) but according to my emotions, a 4.75 because of how often i cried (not joking.)

Content Warnings

nautilusreads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Firstly, the characters in this book have terrible names. “Ryle”, “Lily” and “Atlas” are not names that I will ever name my characters if I were to write a book. It is even worse when you learn that Lily’s full name is “Lily Blossom Bloom”. Also, Lily is somehow “obsessed” with Ellen DeGeneres which boggles my mind. Lily says she originally meant to send these journals as letters to Ellen but decided against it and thank god she didn’t. The journals played an important role in the story as they were meant to flashback to Lily’s past about her first-hand account of observing the abuse her mother suffered and Lily's relationship with Atlas. I felt that the use of journals to flashback to the past was extremely ‘gimmicky’ and maybe there could been a better way of doing it.

I felt that some parts of the story were a bit rigid. At times the dialogue between the characters felt very mechanical and I tried to imagine playing the scenes out in real life and they just didn’t sound right. The pacing of the book was ridiculously slow around the first 30% of the book then it got better afterwards. But this improvement was short-lived because it got way too fast in the last 25% of the book. My last criticism is the scene where Ryle kneels and begs Lily to have sex with him. I was cringing so hard at this because in what world do we see this playing out in real life?

Now let's talk about what I liked about the book and what CH did well in. Firstly, I think Lily’s experience with her abuse was extremely well written. Given this book is told from Lily’s POV, we get to read about her thoughts, feelings and the conundrum regarding her toxic relationship with Ryle. It was well written because it clearly showed the dilemma Lily faced when deciding whether to forgive Ryle for everything he did to her. As an outsider it may be easy for us to tell a person to leave their abuser, that would be a no-brainer option for many of us. But when you are the one who is abused, especially if you are abused by the person you love, it makes the whole situation even more complicated. On one hand, you desperately want to leave the abuser because you have had enough of suffering and constantly living in fear, not knowing when you will get abused again. But then, as Lily described, the thoughts of all the happy moments you’ve shared with them make you want to make excuses for the abuse and be forgiving. When you love someone, a part of you believes that they are capable of changing and becoming better. And in this case, Lily believed that Ryle would change after the first 2 instances of abuse. Fortunately, after the last abuse she suffered, Lily decided to leave Ryle once and for all. Although Ryle was abusive, he genuinely loved Lily and they had very sweet moments together. But to be honest, I wasn’t all that convinced by their love story but others might be. Ryle’s abusive behaviour is partly fueled by his childhood trauma where he shot and killed his older brother by accident. This book is extremely depressing as the more I read it the more I was like what is going on... In a way this makes me empathise with Ryle a little, but obviously, his actions were inexcusable.

Her relationship with Atlas was kind of cute tbh and they had more chemistry than her and Ryle. Atlas was a green flag throughout the story (except when they had sex when atlas was 18 and lily was 15) but lowkey they just trauma-bonded because they were both victims of abuse. Atlas was the person Lily called after the last abuse happened and the moments where Atlas took care of Lily were wholesome and heartwarming.

Overall, I think this book is good to read if you are capable of handling the mentions of rape and domestic abuse and it may even be beneficial to learn more about the experiences of these victims to better empathise with them.

Content Warnings

tothemax100's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I have a lot of respect for the story that is written in these pages. I felt a draw to keep reading through the beginning chapters that were a bit slow but also revealed a deeper and darker narrative than where I thought the book was heading. I was frustrated with the middle of the book because of the decisions made by the characters but that was absolutely the point of the writing. The amount of meticulous and difficult details the author includes throughout these chapters places the reader right into the story and the decisions that are fought with in this section. I felt the end of the book was written spectacularly and really made reading this book worthwhile. The main character’s thought process was so intriguing and made me think about what it might be like to be in that type of relationship in a totally new way. The very end was a little cheesy but still wrapped it up well. A thought provoking novel that I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand what it might be like to live through something like this. Check the content warnings before embarking on this story to make sure this isn’t too hard of a book to read.

Content Warnings