It ends with us

"Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen seconds that we’ll never get back."

This will probably be one of my all time favorite books from this point forward. It gives a perspective into domestic abuse and answers a lot of common questions as to "why didn't they just leave their abuser"? In summary, this book is about two different forms of love; abusive love and genuine, unconditional love, and it takes you on the journey of both so you can see and understand the difference. But it also gives an interesting perspective into the side of the abuser, that sometimes abusive tendencies are a result of deep rooted trauma, and no matter how much the abuser truly wants to change, it isn't always so simple.

"There is no such thing as bad people. We are all just people who sometimes do bad things."

Highly recommend reading this book, it's incredible. ♥

This was one of those books that was available at the library and digitally shelved with other books I'd read and enjoyed, so I picked it up without knowing the premise or genre. So I think Colleen Hoover writes romance novels, and while this is centered around a love story (with ridiculous descriptions that make it clear that people are very attractive and very rich), the thing that saved it for me was the author's take on domestic abuse. As she states in the author's notes, so often it's hard to imagine why people stay in those situations, or it's easy to say, "I'd just leave" and discount the person who stays as weak. In this book she tries to take a less judgmental look at ways in which firm boundaries can sometimes start to blur. (Even so, I found myself eye rolling pretty hard and and yelling "LEAVE HIM" frequently.)