Read­ing The End of Romance, Lily Meyer’s sec­ond nov­el, brought to mind the recent film The Mate­ri­al­ists (2025), star­ring Dako­ta John­son — anoth­er ​“anti-romance” that sets out, at least ini­tial­ly, to chal­lenge our assump­tions about monogamy and mar­riage. Both sto­ries fol­low intel­li­gent, skep­ti­cal women who believe them­selves above con­ven­tion­al roman­tic nar­ra­tives, only to find that they are very much inside one. Each must — reluc­tant­ly, of course — choose between two high­ly desir­able men. The par­al­lels made me won­der whether this is becom­ing a sub-genre, and if so, whether it sig­nals a kind of cul­tur­al rub­ber-band moment for fem­i­nism. The mes­sage seems to be: Ques­tion every­thing — but don’t let your fem­i­nism get in the way of happiness.

In Meyer’s nov­el, the skep­tic is Sylvie Broder, a young Jew­ish woman rebuild­ing her life after escap­ing an abu­sive ear­ly mar­riage. We see enough of her ado­les­cence to under­stand what drove her toward such a con­trol­ling man, and we wit­ness the grad­ual ero­sion of her sense of self with­in the mar­riage — the slow evap­o­ra­tion of what­ev­er once kept her whole.

When Sylvie final­ly leaves, she hard­ens. She becomes guard­ed, resis­tant to pity, deter­mined not to be cast as a vic­tim. She rein­vents her­self as an aca­d­e­m­ic philoso­pher and begins con­struct­ing a the­sis that chal­lenges the very premise of Romance. Rela­tion­ships are ​“traps,” she argues. Romance is ​“their bait and their teeth…It lured you in, then made sure you couldn’t leave.” These the­o­ries offer her more than intel­lec­tu­al diver­sion — they pro­vide struc­ture, a way to orga­nize a life she is rebuild­ing from scratch.

The com­pli­ca­tion, of course, is that real life refus­es to coop­er­ate. Two men enter the pic­ture: Jon­ah, hip and open-mind­ed, who offers her rad­i­cal inde­pen­dence; and Abie, shag­gy and affec­tion­ate, who wants a more tra­di­tion­al fam­i­ly life. Both treat her far bet­ter than her ex ever did. Both feel like rev­e­la­tions. And nei­ther fits clean­ly into her the­sis. Ter­ri­fied of choos­ing wrong, Sylvie attempts to rea­son her way to cer­tain­ty, con­sult­ing her dis­ser­ta­tion notes to decide whom to love.

By that point, I want­ed to shake her. Enough the­o­riz­ing. As Rilke advised, live the ques­tions. The ana­lyt­i­cal Jew in me under­stands the impulse to intel­lec­tu­al­ize vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. But the fic­tion read­er in me want­ed to see her stop think­ing — and start risk­ing. That frus­tra­tion may well be the point: Mey­er allows us to expe­ri­ence the lim­its of analy­sis along­side Sylvie her­self. In trac­ing that ten­sion between intel­lect and desire, she offers a sharp med­i­ta­tion on the impulse to the­o­rize our way out of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty — and on what it takes to rebuild a self after love has gone wrong.