Rating: 1 1/2 stars

But I Love Him is one big gimmick that doesn’t work because of poor writing and bad execution. Amanda Grace tried to do something very creative with the storyline by writing it in reverse chronological order. The story begins at the end, over the course of a year for Ann and her abusive relationship with her boyfriend Conner.

Ann has been beaten and bloodied and left with a broken wrist by Conner. We then go back over months and the days to the beginning of when Ann first met her unbalanced lover.

The material is meant to be dark since it deals with the psychological and emotional abuse of a young girl who has given up everything- her family, friends and future to be with an emotionally disturbed and unstable person. The reason is because Ann loves Conner to the depths of her very soul and feels she’s the only one who can get him help. At no point while I read did I get any sense of a connection between Ann and Conner.

There just wasn’t enough depth or dimension. Everything is surface reading and thrown out with disjointed explanations. Ann comes across as an unreliable narrator who tells the audience the “why”, but doesn’t really show why Conner is so important to her even as he lashes out for no reason.

We are given examples why Conner acts the way he does, from his drunk of a father who also abuses his mother and Conner’s low self-esteem, but he’s as flat as the paper this book is written on.

I had such a disconnect while reading But I Love Him. One reason is there seems to be major chunks of the story missing. This is one convulsed tale with no real justifiable reason for any of it.

But I Love Him is far from unique, and the devastation lies from it being incredibly flawed and defective.
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Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Flux (May 8, 2011)
ISBN-13: 978-0738725949