When Emily Ladau, 24, picked up a copy of the bestselling book Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, she knew it would be an emotional read. The book—which was adapted into a movie that hits theaters on June 3—advertises itself as a "heartbreakingly romantic novel." Here's the plot of the movie (spoilers ahead): Will Traynor, a 35-year-old former thrill-seeker with a spinal cord injury (SCI), falls in love with his quirky twenty-something caregiver Louisa Clark, only to break her heart by committing assisted suicide, believing his new life as a quadriplegic isn't worth living. It's sold over six million copies since its 2012 release.

While many laud the book as a beautiful tearjerker, Ladau found it more troubling than anything. A disability rights activist and wheelchair user since the age of nine, she joins many in the disability community protesting the book's portrayal and treatment of disabled people.

"The book is quite painful for me to read because it points to the fact that disability is a life-ending problem rather than something you can not just survive with but thrive with," Ladau tells SELF.

It's estimated of the 282,000 Americans currently living with a SCI, about 58 percent are tetraplegics, according to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center (NSCISC). Also known as quadriplegic, tetraplegic means a person's motor and sensory functions below the neck are affected by their SCI. 45 percent of those with SCIs have incomplete tetraplegia, meaning they have some motor and sensory function below the neck, while 13.3 percent have complete tetraplegia and total loss of feeling and motor abilities from the neck down. The NSCISC says that each year, there are 17,000 new SCI cases. Yet people with disabilities rarely get representation in the media. A 2011 study showed that less than one percent of regular characters on broadcast TV shows had any sort of disability. And when characters in entertainment do have a disability, rights activists argue they often follow the same storyline: suffering, then death. They cite 2004's Oscar-winning drama Million Dollar Baby, for example, where a boxer becomes a quadriplegic and then asks to die.

"We need to stop making films about killing disabled people because it doesn’t help anyone, and it’s a sad and tired trope," says Dominick Evans, a media and entertainment advocate for the Center for Disability Rights in NYC. Evans was born with a progressive neuromuscular disease that took his ability to walk from him at age 15. But he's built a life. When Louisa encounters Will's character, he's unable to fathom "living boldly"—his own words when encouraging Louisa to take risks in her own life, and the tagline for the film—while in a wheelchair, so he chooses death.

To be clear, assisted suicide is a nuanced issue that many people have strongly fought for. It's a choice an individual can make in many countries and even states in the U.S. What these activists are concerned about is how Me Before You portrays people with disabilities on a wider scale. If it’s suggesting you can’t “live boldly” while disabled, that message can unfortunately stick.

"I have the level of care needs that Will Traynor in this book has," Evans says. "I can’t do daily activities without help, but I still manage to make films, go to school, I have a family, I have a son. It just made me very angry that this is the one depiction of disability that we really see ... There’s little talk [in the book] of how you can live with a disability."