But I Love Him

by Amanda Grace

Sometimes at night, I wake up and stare at the heart for hours. I think of how I collected each piece from the beach, how I glued it all together into one big sculpture. I wonder if Connor realizes what it means, that he'll always have a piece of me no matter what happens. Each piece of glass is another piece of myself that I gave to him. It's too bad I didn't keep any pieces for myself. At the beginning of senior year, Ann was a smiling, straight-A student and track star with friends and a future. Then she met a haunted young man named Connor. Only she can heal his emotional scars; only he could make her feel so loved - and needed. Ann can't recall the pivotal moment it all changed, when she surrendered everything to be with him, but by graduation, her life has become a dangerous high wire act. Just one mistake could trigger Connor's rage, a senseless storm of cruel words and violence damaging everything - and everyone - in its path. This evocative slideshow of flashbacks reveals a heartbreaking story of love gone terribly wrong.

• ISBN13: 9780738725949
• Publish Date: 8 May 2011
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 7 July 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Flux
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 264
• Language: English

Reviews

[kymmiejournals]

"I have to try so hard every moment of every day to do and say the right thing, or his mood will turn."



The story was told through a set of flashbacks, in a way a person would try to go over his/her diary with lots of good and bad memories written in there.

What upsets me is that, I haven't seen/read what exactly Connor did to Ann in that "One Year" or the present time, I want to read all the gory details how he hit her, how he struck her with harsh words, how Ann realized it's too much and no longer wants to be part of Connor's rage, endless sorry's and miserable life because, in the first chapter, she was just lying on the floor, feeling all the pain and throbs in her body. She can't seem to move. Shattered glasses, shredded pages of books, torn pictures are everywhere. I want to see/read the part where Connor broke the seaglass Ann made for him that took her months to finish it - Yup, I'm that brutal.

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[Angie]

Wow. I read this through in one sitting; I just could not put it down. I'm not really sure where to start this review. I could start at the beginning, which is really the end, since the book starts off with the night everything went to hell. Everything in the apartment is smashed and broken, including Ann's wrist. Connor has disappeared in a fit of rage. It's obvious there's been a fight, but it's not clear how they got to that point. That's what the rest of the book is dedicated to. It goes backwards through their year together leading up to that night.

I think choosing to set up the story this way was a wise choice. It was much more interesting seeing how things got started, rather than the typical how things end up. We see things go from worse to better for Ann and Connor, but somehow their relationship seems to get even more unhealthy the further back we go. That's probably because we know how it ends up and can see the warning signs from the beginning. First impressions are not everything. Things started out innocent enough: picnics, bowling, board games. But way too fast they entered their own little world and became everything to each other and things just went downhill.

Occasionally, the past events are interrupted by that climatic night, and we see more of the aftermath of what he has done to her. Ann went from bubbly, and excited about life, to completely and utterly broken. It was so sad seeing how her life drastically changed because of one boy. It was even sadder how she judged Conner's mom for staying with his abusive dad, even though she was doing the exact same thing: thinking he'll change and she can fix him, and hoping next time will be different. Well, next time will be different; it'll be worse.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Joni Reads]

I have read a lot of stories about domestic violence. If I come across a book about it I have to read it. And yet, I have never read one quite like But I Love Him before. At first the style was confusing to me. Not that it made it difficult to follow, just that I felt it was needless. I mean, why write it in reverse? I was afraid that it would start with the first entry which was exactly one year into the relationship with Ann incredibly hurt and upset and then just flash back into the relationship without ever letting us know what happens to Ann. Fortunately that is not the case and while it is written in reverse it does flash to "present day" so to speak so we know how Ann is feeling while she is flashing back to the relationship.

Connor is different from most of the abusers in the books that I have read. I felt for him. He really hated what he was doing to Ann. He desperately wanted to control it. But luck just was not on his side. He grew up seeing his alcoholic father abusing his mother and Connor found himself stepping between his parents to end the abuse on numerous occasions. Even now that he has his own apartment his mother still calls him when his father attacks her. And despite himself he has become as abuser himself.

Ann was raised by her grief-stricken mother after her father died of cancer when Ann was young. She never felt a connection with her mother who never seemed to get over Ann's father's death. She meets Connor and immediately falls in love him. She loses herself in him so quickly and before she knows it she has moved into his apartment with him, quit the track team, and started to ignore her best friend. Connor always told her that he hits objects, not people and she believed him. That is, until he slapped her for the first time. But Ann knows he doesn't mean it. The second Ann starts to cry Connor seems to wake up from his anger and immediately apologizes to Ann. She feels trapped but she can't turn her back on him either.

After finishing this book I read an interview with the author in the back of the book. One of the questions asked was why she chose to write the book in reverse order. She explained it by saying that most books about domestic violence follow such a predictable pattern. The reader can see the abuse before it happens and therefore not understand why the person stays with the abuser. In But I Love Him, Amanda Grace wrote it so you were hurled into the abuse from the first page. You know he abuses her and now you get to see, in reverse order, how it progressed. You can't pinpoint in your head where it started, why it happened, etc. I also feel that in this way, Connor doesn't seem like the bad guy. I actually felt for him. He so obviously didn't want to be an abuser. He mentions getting help on numerous occasions. Usually I am adamantly against the abuser in books on domestic violence but this one was different. There is almost a connection felt with him as well as with Ann.

I flew through this book and I loved every minute of it. It's exquisitely written and I hope to see more novels written like this. I would love to see this book be required reading for high school students. I think it would open the eyes of teens to see an abuser relationship in a new way and possible save some lives.