Wanna know what line absolutely kills me?
‘I don’t want you to think she was weak. She wasn’t.’
It’s such a powerful statement that tells us so much about Ilya as a person and the kind of childhood and upbringing he was subjected to.
His mother’s suicide was an accident, his father said, and don’t you dare say it was anything other than that. His father and brother made sure to beat into him that emotions are weakness.
Sadness is a sign of something broken within you that needs fixing, and for all Ilya’s emotional growth, he internalised that.
We see it continue into the second book. Ilya keeps therapy a secret from Shane for months, not wanting to burden him with his illness. Hiding that part so he could ‘fix’ himself for Shane. So Shane would never know this vulnerability. So that Ilya could deserve him. Earn him, somehow.
Ilya doesn’t view what his mother did as ‘weak’- but he can’t extend that same understanding, that same kindness to himself. His mother’s son.
















