The End of Romance

by Lily Meyer

A big-hearted, wise, unceasingly buoyant novel about a woman who, after escaping a bruising marriage, theorizes that happiness is possible solely with the eradication of all romance--only to find a love that could change her life forever

Sylvie Broder was taught early to embrace joy. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors who'd developed a system of thought that focused on enjoying the life they'd snatched back from Hitler, Sylvie grew up believing in the tenacious pursuit of pleasure. So, when she finds herself trapped in a suffocating, emotionally abusive marriage, no one is more unmoored than Sylvie herself. With enormous fortitude, Sylvie frees herself and turns to graduate school, determined to prove her new Straight women will find true liberation and happiness only once romance is eradicated.

Sylvie uses her new-found freedom to enjoy men, but never to commit to one, priding herself in separating sex from tenderness. She doesn't sleep over, certainly doesn't cuddle, and never hooks up with a man more than once. Then she meets Robbie and Abie...and finds her philosophy sorely tested. A warm and gentle man, Robbie treats Sylvie with patience and enormous kindness, offering her the soft place to land she hasn't had since childhood. Abie, on the other hand, is passionate and dynamic, a man who challenges Sylvie, and with whom she finds herself constantly disarmed. With both men, she feels a deep desire that looks, worryingly, a lot like love.

Cleverly constructed, delightfully funny, and beautifully written, The End of Romance is an anti-romance romance novel that charts its fallible heroine's tumultuous journey to love and happiness with erudition and deep feeling—a story for anyone who, despite their very best efforts, has fallen in love, and wondered why.

Genres: Romance, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Book Club, Audiobook, Adult

336 pages, Hardcover

First published February 3, 2026

Reviews

[Denise Ruttan]

I liked the idea of an anti-romance novel and on that front this story delivered, though I'd describe it more as women's fiction about an unconventional love story. It just wasn't for me, mostly because it's hard to appreciate beautiful sentences when you loathe all the characters.

This book also belongs in the trope of literary authors writing about open relationships only to discover the message that pair-bonding monogamy is the most natural state of being, which I find annoying. This kind of felt like a pretentious Sex in the City.

Sylvie runs away from a controlling husband and starts a new secret life studying philosophy, which was her childhood dream. Her Ph.D dissertation explores the idea that she can heal from her abusive marriage by thinking her way out of romance, that romance should belong to a private instead of public sphere and separated from emotion. But even as she embarks on ethical nonmonogamy with a safe but dull corporate lawyer, she struggles to implement her own philosophy of emotionless love.

I perhaps found this too smart for me as it routinely got bogged down in philosophical meanderings, which was sort of interesting, but then Sylvie turns into a hypocrite when she meets Abie. I thought this was going to be a romance between her and Robbie the boring lawyer, then her asshole husband, then Abie came out of the blue. I was sold on him being the best choice for her, but I didn't like how he held a monogamy ultimatum over her head. Their happiness happened too quickly. Sylvie learns the boring message that not all men are abusive. Thankfully she did not go back to Jonah- I would have thrown my Kindle out the window if so. I frequently wanted to shake Sylvie for her selfish, shallow decisions and lack of agency. The way to feminism and independence is apparently digging into assholery, it often felt like.

I also hated Dr. Rau, the controlling mentor of her best friend whom Nadia was in love with. There was not one character I was rooting for.

Much of the book was Sylvie philosophizing her way into good treatment, which I just ultimately found kind of boring.

An unconventional piece of women's fiction, but not for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Miss✧Pickypants ᓚᘏᗢ]

It's weird how sometimes I find myself really enjoying a book despite thinking the main character, in this case Sylvie, is a real lunkhead. With this book, the writing is wonderful and the theme of the anti-romance romance is quite clever. In this story, Sylvie rejects the traditional roles of marriage and romance and bases her PhD thesis on this.

To explain how she arrives here or any more would ruin the story arc, so this is all I will say regarding the plot. While I didn't agree with or even like Sylvie very much, the unique storyline and beautiful writing, along with the tensions Sylvie experiences as she works to reconcile her own reality with her theories, kept me super engaged. Those who appreciate waxing philosophically about societal mores, particularly relationships and romance, will want to pick this one up.

[em]

major hater review incoming so this is a fair warning.....

this book actively infuriated me. when i first started, i was SO on board. the writing pulled me in (how was i to know, so early on, that it would be the only thing i enjoyed about the book after finishing), the premise seemed promising, so i waited for the story to get good and i naively kept going. if i'm being honest, it did get good...... but then it philosophized itself into a merry-go-round of sycophantic behavior by none other than the main character we're supposed to root for!

which brings me to my first and perhaps largest problem with the book-- sylvie. sure, she represents real women, real feelings, real circumstances, but she made me want to bash my head into a wall. she constantly had some ground-breaking revelation, only to go back on her word and betray herself in the process. i enjoyed being inside her head and understanding her motivations and struggles, but we didn't need 300 pages of her whining and being a terrible partner (would she have liked me to use this word here?) and friend to everyone else in the book. adding the fact she knew was being shitty to everyone in her life (and herself), and talked about it ad nauseam--making the entire thing that much more inane.

to get into slyvie's relationships in the book (which the book centers the entire premise on); i didn't believe her happiness with abie at all, considering it came too quickly and was exactly the type of thing she set out on the premise of never wanting. she claimed to be in the head-over-heels kind of love, but yet it didn't feel grounded in anything concrete. why did she love abie? i truly couldn't tell you. robbie seemed like the logical choice for her, but of course you can't expect sylvie to do anything that makes a modicum of sense. robbie deserved better, but in the end he got away from sylvie so he won, tbh. biggest ew moment was at the end when slyvie meets up with jonah again in the hotel room. that part made me want to physically throw my book across the room. no way, just ew. gross and weird for the author to write a character, one who was a victim of abuse, to do that.

lots of sex in this book and besides the instances with jonah, i did enjoyed the book's exploration and celebration of having sex as a woman. it was nice to read about women not being shamed or perceived a specific way for liking sex. with all it's flaws, the book was very sex-positive which was only a good thing.

this entire book for me was a testament to my ability to keep reading even when things get really fucking bad. even when the book has said the same thing 30 different ways and the main character is flip-flopping between two men none of whom she should be with. it was the same sentiment described over and over again and literally nothing else happened that was even remotely interesting. there could've been a character study in there somewhere, but the author never let the mc get out of her own head enough to discover it. it was such a waste of pages to read.

unfortunately, slyvie suffers from what i like to call 'was never single for any moment in their life and therefore needs to be to garner some much needed personal development'. she needs to stay away from men and learn to be alone.

maybe it's a triumph on the author's part that she was able to make me feel so strongly towards these characters, but i just wish i could've enjoyed the story or characters even a little bit.

[Melissa ~ Bantering Books]

4.5 stars

[Jillane]

there’s something about this that touched me; i loved the philosophical aspect, sylvie’s attempts to figure out how to live and what it means to be alive and how to share that life with other people.

thank you to netgalley and the publishers for the e-arc!

[Sarah Jaffe]

personally attacked by this book! in a good way. a story about the way in which trying to decenter men and love from your (heterosexual) life just leads to ever more fixation on same. and how that can be a trap that keeps you running the same circles.

[Ally Friedman]

I urge my followers to buy a HARD COPY of this book from your LOCAL BOOKSTORE because you are going to want to read it, share it with friends, and have this gorgeous cover displayed in your home. What I loved about this book is the access we get to the main character’s mind. I think the combination of philosophy, turtle, and sex (you must read it to see what I mean by that) create an incredible, original vehicle for fostering intimacy between me (the reader) and Sylvie (the main character). Sylvie is all of our tendencies - codependent, avoidant, a girls girl, a bad friend, has big feelings, is guarded - but still feels like a singular character all her own. Also, this book is super devour-able, as evidenced by the fact that I devoured it in 1 day.

[V]

I wanted to like this book badly. The premise sounded promising, a woman escapes an abusive marriage, builds a radical feminist philosophy that romance is the enemy of women's freedom, and then boom! The irony hits when she falls for two guys anyway. Anti-romance romance? Sign me up! But oh boy, what a letdown. Have I ever told you that I hate books with just casual sex, sex, and sex?

[Stephanie]

Girl, get a grip.

[one.too.many.books]

Literary fiction that absolutely blew me away and will stay with me for a long time.

I absolutely adored this book. I don’t think this review will give it justice but I’ll try and put some words together about this. I feel sad to have finished this book, I want to keep the characters with me for longer.

It was such a different read, a very unique novel. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anything quite like it but I loved it!

It’s set in three parts, I enjoyed the first part but I absolutely loved the second and third part. Sylvie, our protagonist, leaves a stifling and abusive marriage and finds herself trying to prove that romance should end for people to live a free and happy life. She tries to live by her own philosophy; how that goes the book will tell!

Sylvie was such a unique main character, you got to understand her thinking whilst also learning so much about her theories and general feminist thinking. She was complex and multi-layered, I kind of miss her now. And I loved the other characters in this book. It’s unapologetic, honest, with a lot of depth but leaving space to think.

I also cried. I love a book that makes me feel deeply, and this one certainly did!

“She admired him, now and always, for his ability to see himself clearly, without shame or ego interceding. A lot of women would say this was a rare trait in a man. Sylvie thought it was a rare trait in human beings.”

“It was how she imagined early motherhood: a form of waiting that mixed calm with watchfulness, relief that an evening was over with sorrow that it was gone.”

Pick this up for a unique literary fiction read with depth, love, friendship, wit and honesty. I highly recommend!

[Nicole]

Oh boo hoo woman who wants to theorize the end of romance has agonizing experience of being loved by two great guys 🙄 well written tho

[Diamond Wittlief]

Sometimes a book ends in a way you don’t expect and it’s surprising in the best way. This is not one of those books.

[Alexa]

I loved this book. Last week I was at a bookstore for the purpose of doing reporting for a journalism story, but I walked back to this book like 5 times. It was just calling out to me, and I bought it.

I then proceeded to devour it. I love when philosophy is delivered via narrative fiction so this book was perfect for me. I never annotate fiction but I annotated this one a ton. It really got me thinking. I didn’t expect this love triangle to be intercepted by Focault, Weil, or Arendt, so that was a delicious surprise. I should have double majored in philosophy but alas graduation is next month.

Sylvia’s relationship with her Jewish grandparents was especially delightful for me to read about, because it’s incredibly similar to the relationship I have with mine.

I debated taking off a star for the ending but I decided to keep it . I recommend this to everyone, but I also think it is a very particular book for an acquired taste.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading]

3.5 -- oh sylvie.

[Lucsbooks]

I am mentally ill, but thank god, not enough to relate to "The End of Romance". This was so bad, it was beyond a DNF. I needed to know how this would end.

I started this book with the highest of expectations, and I devoured the first third of it. We go through Sylvie's childhood and teen years and witness how young women are socialised to centre romance and, in her case, push down her feelings and self-expression at the same time by society and her family, which unsurprisingly doesn't make for a good combination. It's clear why women are susceptible to being manipulated into bad situations and accept them as normal, and become pick-me's, which is exactly what happens to Sylvie.

Something I think this book portrayed incredibly well, was in how slowly a relationship can become abusive and how BDSM dynamics can be used to further convince women that grow up in world that idolizes traditional families, with very clear hierarchies, to accept men's control in every aspect of their lives and call that freedom, no matter how much their subconscious screams at them.

If you are a philosophy lover, one of the most unique points in this book is Sylvie's interest in it and how she uses it to build herself back, both emotionally and academically. I also enjoyed how politics and current events influence the story, and how they affect Sylvie as a Jewish woman.

Ultimately, though, all these big themes are sabotaged by her middle-class background and how she refuses to engage with her privilege. I made posts before about how the only reason what happened to her was traumatic was because she was a rich white woman, and I stand by it.

She has no interest in actually deconstructing the ideologies that made her a victim. In fact, a big theme in this book is her refusing to see herself as such.

It's no wonder that she has such trouble with feminism, because she doesn't understand it. She never stops being male-identified and continues to look down on women, and let men run her life. She doesn't want to be a free woman; like most white women, she wants to be a white man and get to use others around her to take care of her emotional and physical needs the way they do.

And then she ultimately betrays herself and the belief system she built for a man. So the message of the book ends up being: when you fall in love, all your stupid feminist ideals stop mattering, and you become much happier when you mould yourself after what a man wants. It just needs to be the right medium-ugly man! So she ends up in the same position she started with: no money and living at a man's place, only with a poorer guy who is good in bed now. What a great feminist message!

I swear to god, I spent most of the second part of this book thinking this was written by a man to sabotage us. I never went from rooting so much for a woman to wanting to see her and the author committed to an asylum. How someone can read so much and learn nothing is a wonder.

On the positive side, there was a half-Portuguese character who mentions one of her fathers having left the country to escape Salazar's regime, and since I'm Portuguese, that was a cool detail.
I pity the trees that were used to print this book, and I mourn the months I spent reading it. I don't know how this was published, and I'm at a loss to understand how anyone could have liked it. I usually save my 1-star reviews for really problematic authors, but I need to warn people.

Thank you to NetGalley, Edelweiss, Viking and Penguin Random House for this DRC.

[laurakellylitfit]

Out February 3rd, 2026

Sylvie’s story kicks off with a gut-punch: she’s stuck in a toxic marriage that’s slowly draining her spirit, despite being raised to chase joy like it’s oxygen. Her family history—rooted in survival and celebration—makes her situation feel even more heartbreaking. But she doesn’t stay down for long. With grit and a sharp mind, she breaks free and dives into grad school, where she hatches a bold theory: straight women can only be truly happy if they ditch romance altogether. It’s radical, it’s messy, and it’s her way of reclaiming control.

She throws herself into this new philosophy with full force—hookups without strings, no cuddling, no repeats. It’s all about separating pleasure from emotional vulnerability. But then Robbie and Abie show up, and everything starts to unravel. Robbie’s gentle and grounding, while Abie’s fiery and unpredictable. Both men challenge her beliefs in different ways, and Sylvie finds herself caught between what she’s sworn off and what her heart might actually want. The tension between her ideals and her feelings makes for a compelling, often funny, and deeply human ride.

What makes this story stand out is how it balances sharp wit with emotional depth. Sylvie isn’t just trying to avoid heartbreak—she’s trying to rewrite the rules of love itself. But as she stumbles through desire, connection, and vulnerability, it becomes clear that even the most carefully constructed theories can’t protect us from the chaos of feeling. It’s a messy, thoughtful, and surprisingly tender journey that reminds us how love—whether we want it or not—has a way of sneaking in through the cracks.

Thank you to NetGalley and Viking for this ARC!

[Pearl]

Something happens when you read a book that explores human emotions/experiences/behaviours this way, it forces you to take stock, to reflect on your own feelings and experiences. There was so much about Sylvie’s story that mirrored my own, there were times I understood her and times I wanted to shake her, but the more I sit with it, the more I realize it’s because I’ve probably made a similar decision.

This book isn’t afraid to go all the way, the things we’d rather not talk about, the decisions we actually make but usually think we’re too smart or moral to make, etc. This was such a truthful book, and ultimately that’s my favorite thing about it. This is what it feels like, to be alone, to go unseen for so long, to be betrayed, to heal, to go through the process of healing, to grow, to evolve, to love and be loved. None of it is pretty or straightforward or simple or logical, it’s a mess of feelings and mistakes, and choices, and people.

I’m so grateful to have received an ARC for this, I really enjoyed it. The writing was absolutely wonderful, there was a natural flow to it. This is a book I’m definitely going to read more than once.

[Isabel]

1.5 stars

It read very much like a stream of narration with no real happenings if that makes sense. The dialogue is a bit stiff and abstract, so while the characters might've had real personality, it didn't really come through. It was also too pessimistic for my liking, but I guess that's what you get for reading a novel titled The End of Romance. Sadly, this just wasn't for me.

But thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC!

[Jenna Gannon]

Breh. I lowk forced myself to finish this book. All for the ending to not even be an ending. Nothing even got resolved! The main character was frustrating. Kinda disappointed. :(

[Jade Y.]

MAJOR hate review alert! I haven’t felt this strongly about a book for a decade and some change.

I get a feeling from the title and the one liner book recs that the publisher had plans to upsell this one as a somewhat sophisticated women-targeting novel that delves into things like womanhood, relationships, polyamory and maybe some philosophy, to brand it as relevant, which made it even more of a let down when I followed through and decided it was basically just another title of trite harem lit.

Surely it’s a page turner, the text flows nicely and the sentences are pretty, so I guess its commercial success is due. But there’s no meaningful discussion about relationships whatsoever, each and every single one of the characters, lovers AND friends, automatically and unequivocally chooses Sylvie the protagonist without her ever having to engage or reciprocate properly. Love just falls into her laps. Even Jonah who the author tried to portray as a callous egocentric ass, which judging from part III of the book did not undergo much self improvement after 8 years, made relentless efforts in order to win Sylvie’s good grace, while the more logical and character consistent development would be for him to move on and remarry another docile sweetheart who lacks agency to fill the niche of trophy wife in his household.

The whole dynamic between Sylvie and the guys feels extremely inorganic and false. Her friendships are arguably more realistic albeit similarly dysfunctional, she either chooses alienation (w Rachel) or sublimation (w Nadia) in relation to her romantic partners, and omg does she just keep fucking things up for everybody💀

Speaking of agency, Sylvie’s tapeworm of a personality made me wanna peel my face off and shred it into face confettis since I was a third into the book. During her Jonah phase she was an utter and complete doormat but I could live with it. Finally after her escape I was excited to see some character development, only to have found that her way of implementing the end of romance (her philosophy) was yet to unapologetically yield herself to the limerence to two men.

She moved around teaching hours and played hooky from school precisely because she hadn’t taken a single minute of respite from romance. She continued to seek comfort in the false pretense of ethical polyamory and dwelled in the countless encounters of casual sex with little to no character development until the very last chapter, where to my great relief she finally amassed the strength to file for divorce. And that hedonistic delusion of a lifestyle masked as progressiveness accounts both for Sylvie’s voluntary disempowerment, her lack of agency, as well as the author’s sophistry and disingenuousness.

Philosophy is nothing but an accessory in this book, an ornament to make things palatable and pretty. No true attention was ever given to Wittgenstein or Augustine or Arendt unless a two line quote counts, no intellectual debate was attempted either. Philosophy was condiment, as were the guy characters. There was no depth or truth to neither Robbie nor Abie, they were two dimensional tools, one safe vanilla lawyer and one small town rogue historian who smells like pheromone and campfire. Their sole purpose was to make whoever the self insert is for Sylvie to feel hot and wanted, and just like that even the sex part was made unsexy to me.

On polyamory, although I personally am not a believer of the construct, i couldn’t help but think it’s a bit reductive to let the protagonist experiment the idea briefly only to have her swiftly circling back to the conclusion that monogamy is the one true answer to feel at home? Feels like the author’s dawdling lol

Final point Robbie doesn’t exist in real life. Not even in fantasy land would a good-looking well-adjusted DC law student who cooks and cleans and keeps a neat apartment and later chugs down the red pill to become a corporate sellout accept being a runner up to a mess of a human being like Sylvie.

In short if the author’s intention was to antagonize the readers against the protagonist so that they’d avoid being like her irl, she did a brilliant job bc I find Sylvie to be a disgusting personality. Otherwise to me it’s a couple hundred pages worth of trite cheap smut wrapped in pretty packaging.

[Alysia Leonardo]

This review was difficult to write because I did not really like this one :(

My initial reaction? I wanted to throw my Kindle 😭 I expected a tale of light-hearted misadventures in romance (with an imaginary turtle as a commentator?!), some angst given the title of course, but this made me sit in discomfort and discernment. The End of Romance explores love and relationships in a manner I’ve never read before. While I did appreciate the language and prose, I’m not sure that I agree with Sylvie’s, our FMC, approach. I didn’t expect to end up disliking her for a majority of this book. At times, she did things that felt icky when she didn’t have to be. I’m also questioning her reliability as a narrator.

However, I did like the exploration of the idea that the human experience in itself can be very strange. We know ourselves better than we know, we crave connection, and yet, we self-sabotage. We judge. We don’t show up the way we should. Sylvie acknowledges this about herself, the hurt she causes to those closest to her, specifically as a result of her actions or lack thereof, but she doesn’t really change and that is what left me feeling disillusioned.

So I sat with this feeling. Through the tears (yes, this book made me cry), I wondered, what was the point? Yes, Life and love and family cannot always be pretty; it can be messy and weird and hurtful at times, but so can we, despite our capacity to love so deeply. Sylvie reminds us of this ugly truth, but I wish the ending didn’t feel so rushed and incomplete. Maybe then we could’ve seen her growth. The end of this book felt dissatisfying.

I’m rating this book more than 1 star for the way it’s had me writing my own dissertations about these characters! I can appreciate a story that still invokes feeling even if it’s not my cup of tea, but I don’t think I’ll read this again.

[Michelle MacAllister]

I had growing frustration with Sylvie through the whole book. And don’t get me started on her “turtle”. Although, I think the turtle is symbolic. It also allows the reader to see a more in depth analysis of her inner thoughts/struggles. The war within herself. The emotional roller coaster was worth it at the end.

[SVL]

This is a story about an insufferable protagonist with terrible views and a fundamentally incoherent view of romance, despite the book title. I deeply loathed Sylvie, the protagonist, by the end of the book and do not understand why the author wrote this character. I finished Yesteryear recently and loved that book with the obvious understanding that the reader is supposed to hate the protagonist. In this book, I was confused if Sylvie was supposed to be insufferable or if her “multi-layered-ness” came off wrong. Either way, I wish I could have my time back that I spent reading this.


The plot follows Sylvie from young adulthood in middle age as she develops her view on romance. After an abusive first marriage, she escapes to Charlottesville and begins a PhD in philosophy about how modern romance is impossible. There she meets two men who prove her wrong in different ways. You can just about guess how the rest of the story goes.

The protagonist Sylvie is an actual idiot who’s experiences no character development. It was infuriating to watch her behave like a child over and over again. The author even goes as far as to add these imaginary friend characters that Sylvie talks to well into adulthood. The author probably meant it to be endearing, but it proves how childish and immature she is. Instead of being honest with her partners, she lies and evades and talks to the imaginary friends in her head. The entire novel I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to hate Sylvie or if she was just poorly written.

This book was also bit unsettling because it takes place between Charlottesville and DC and the author mentions many of my favorite places in both cities, which was odd to read about in a the story I partly loathed reading. So much name dropping that I almost felt the author was looking over my shoulder. At least this part was well researched.

This book was not about romance and unfortunately I do not recommend it unless you need some rage bait in your life.

[gasbolina]

Oh, Sylvie. As long as there is human emotion, romance will never end.

At its core, this is a book about the horrors of writing your dissertation, and what happens when you realise you not only don't know what you're defending in it, you also have no idea what you even believe in. Which, I will admit, happened a couple of times to me, and boy!, do I love when a book acts as a mirror and reflects me back to myself! However! It was really hard to like this book, because it's so hard to be inside Sylvie's head. Even when she was making a good philosophical point about something, I was still struggling to enjoy it. I definitely felt for her, and I could understand the need to rationalise/apply theory to your trauma to make sense of it — my dissertation was about Laura Palmer from Twin Peaks, so, you know. But is that enough to say this was, subjectively, a good book for me? I'm not sure. I wanted her to find the answer and the peace she was looking for. I wanted her to go back to the therapist who diagnosed her with PTSD and give them another chance. I wanted her to finally move to Miami so she would stop romanticising the idea of it. Most of the time I just wanted it to be over.

Also, I don't believe in ethical non-monogamy, so all of Sylvie's attempts at attaching some kind of philosophical/moral superiority to defend it made it impossible for me to not roll my eyes and cringe. Even if I saw the ending coming a mile away. Whatever. What I do believe in is that we should all talk more about identifying early signs of spousal abuse, and the effects that trauma can have on someone's brain. Keeping all of that private is how they win. I sincerely hope this book can be of some help regarding that.


Thank you to Verve Books and Netgalley for the arc.

[Allyson Preble]

I have not read another book that switched from maybe i'll DNF to being hooked as fast as this one. In part one, I really disliked Sylvie and could not see where this book was going to go. You're almost detached from Sylvie as a character and the story moves so quickly! Part 2 reads almost like an entirely new novel. We get more insight into Sylvie's character and her head and the plot slows down drastically. This is where the story picks up and where I found myself getting sucked in.

It's odd, part 1 is almost like a prolonged introduction, but it's necessary to have all this backstory for the rest of the novel to make sense and have the emotional impact that it does. But the story really shines, for me in the back half of the book. There's so much to chew on, and the philosophy element really leaves you in your thoughts long after putting the book down. This is a book where, once I finished it I gave it a star rating but the more I reflect on the book the more I realize that I need to rethink my rating.

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me an eArc in exchange for my review.

[Marianne Carman]

Writing this from the uber to the airport!!!! But I finished this last night and did not enjoy at all. Basically this book is about a woman who escapes an abusive marriage and how she views romance after that. I think this book was trying to be too much. It was super philosophical but not in an interesting way, I feel like I couldn’t even understand the main character’s line of reasoning a lot. The whole book is about her philosophies around love but none of them really make any sense and they weren’t even that thought provoking or interesting. It kind of reminded me of if you had gone to a freshman year gender studies class and everyone is trying to say something to sound super smart and woke, but none of it makes any sense. Most of the interesting stuff happened in the first half. I wish it would’ve focused more on what was going on for her mentally when she was in her abusive marriage and when she decided to escape. Also she’s kind of the worst person ever and I know she’s had some terrible life experiences with love but still it was a hard read. Honestly don’t read this.

[Katie Clare]

I enjoyed this book but definitely had my gripes with it. It took me awhile to get into it. I was more invested during the sections about J and A and less invested in R. I found it easy to read and follow which i appreciate always.

My main issue is with the main character. She was soooo pick me. Writing her dissertation about the end of romance?? I mean come on! I know she had her reasons for this thesis but still. Of course the girl who doesn’t believe in romance has 2 men obsessed with her. I just can’t with her. My annoyances with Sylvie did not take away for my overall enjoyment of the book.

[Kistal]

4.5/5 stars

I loved it. It definitely went the way I expected, but the journey there was raw. Part of me thought someone was going to die — but yeah, I loved it.

Beautifully written, and a precise mosaic of how trauma folds into certainty until you lose your own identity — and sometimes, only then, find your truth. Sylvie is wholly, messily human, and her humanity looks like fear and poor choices. That will make a certain kind of reader chafe. But that discomfort is the rhetorical point. It’s meant for you to sit in discomfort instead of absolute certainty.

That happened to be the entire thesis of my PhD application statement. So yeah — I admire the message more than I can say.

[Kim Novak (The Reading Rx)]

The End of Romance is a slow burn semi-romance as a woman finds herself intellectually and sexually after fleeing an abusive marriage... and eventually finds love and romance in a quieter more mature form. I had difficulty relating to Sylvie just based on different life experiences. Others may feel a different connection. I found the aspect of her conversations with her childhood imaginary turtle friend/conscience the most intriguing but wanted a lot more of it.

Thank you to Viking Penguin | Viking and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

[Patty Ramirez]

This is such a unique story and executed in such a great way.

Sylvie leaves a horrible marriage, reconstructs her life and falls in love with Robbie and Abie.

Is this story messy? Absolutely, but in a way that makes you ponder what love should be.

Loved how Sylvie’s friendship with Nadia played such a huge role in this story.

Only thing that prevented me from giving this a 5⭐️ was I felt that it dragged a bit at the end.

Read this!

Thank you to Viking Penguin and the author for providing a free copy of this book through NetGalley.