After 101

Review 8

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars.

As a prepubescent fan of One Direction, I started reading this story when I was 12 or so. I read all three of the books, and loved them immensely. I found aspects of the relationship 'hot' and I would continually gush to my friends about how I wanted a relationship like Tessa and Harry's (or Hardin, as he seems to be renamed as).

And then I got a reality check.

This book romanticizes emotional abuse in every way possible. Tessa gave up her entire life for Hardin, and he threw her in the dust multiple times. He was controlling, overprotective, rude, and did many things that are simply unforgivable. And yet Tessa goes back to him consistently, forgives him for every damn thing he does, and everyone seems to be okay with it. Newsflash, it's not okay. Let me give you some perspective: imagine that you are an innocent college freshman. You meet a rude, cocky, tattooed boy who you can't seem to get out of your head. You eventually develop a romantic relationship. He controls who you are friends with, he walks all over you, he disrespects you in every way possible.

He makes you feel incompetent and forces you to move into an apartment with him. You break up with your boyfriend, who you've been dating for years upon years, for this guy you've known for less than 3 months. You completely throw away your relationship with your mother, who has raised you and who is the only relative you know of, all because she doesn't like your new boyfriend. And then you find out that you threw your entire life away for something that started out as a bet to this guy. He claims that he loves you and that it wasn't just the bet, and though you stay away for a few weeks, you eventually go back to him.

He continues to control your life, even going so far as to make sure you don't get an apartment in Seattle so you won't leave him. He gets crazily jealous whenever you so much as interact with someone of the opposite gender, and forbids you from seeing them or being friends with them. You fight every other chapter, and then have make up sex and leave your problems to deal with later. Except you never actually deal with them, just get drunk and have more sex.

Does that sound like a happy, healthy relationship to you? Because it's not. It is abusive and controlling, and not okay in any way, shape or form. And yet this book normalizes it, romanticizes it, makes girls think that it's completely normal and okay, even cute. You say that this book is about real life topics, about loving someone unconditionally. Yes, this book addresses real life topics, but it doesn't deal with them in the proper way. If Tessa had left Hardin and not gone back to him, if they had both gone to therapy and gotten help and overcome being abused and abusing, it might have been okay. Yeah, I realize that Tessa leaves Hardin for a little bit at the end and sort of builds a separate life, but then she goes back to him, when he hasn't really even changed, and they decide to get married.

That's not a happy ever after, that is "hey I'm making progress! Good for me! Let's tear it all down and start at the beginning again and be bound to life to someone who has emotionally abused me and will continue to do so because I can't gather up the courage to leave him!" That is going to embed itself in the minds of young girls, and they're going to think it's okay, when it's not. I had my reality check, I realized that this book is ridiculous and romanticizing topics that should not be romanticized. But some girls won't. They will go on thinking this type of relationship is okay. And that is the issue I have with this book, and that is why this book should not be put into the public eye.