Spoilery Book Reviews

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

*CONTENT WARNING* This book touches on the topic of abusive relationships so if that is something you don't want to read about then give this chapter a miss. Cheers!

Back of the book

Sometimes the one who loves you is the one who hurts you the most.

Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up – she graduated from college, moved to Boston and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily, but Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan – her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

My thoughts

Flipping between vastly different genres so rapidly made the start of this book SCREAM romance. Once I slipped into the cringe state of mind I quickly fell in love with Lily, Ryle (and Atlas) all over again. This was not my first time reading this book so I knew what I was in for. Of course the first time I read it, the story hit a lot harder because I wasn't expecting anything outside of the basic romance storyline.

I know Colleen Hoover is sort of infamous now for being good but not good. I don't know the details, just that it's been a thing. However I absolutely love everything about this book. So let's start with the negatives.

I have a list of things much too convenient to be realistic when this is obviously supposed to be a very based-in-reality hard-hitting soul-crushing moral storytelling novel.

· Alyssa walking into Lily's shop and working just for being bored because she really is that rich

· Alyssa's pregnancy issues were very convenient. Not impossible, but it bothered me to have fertility issues only surface-level mentioned in a strong woman-focussed story.

· Ryle being a neurosurgeon

· Lily opening a successful business from the get-go and including ZERO details about actually owning and running said business. In my own writing I am very detail-oriented and struggle to just 'skip over' parts I don't actually know even when they are completely unnecessary. The lack of detail to Lily running her business made it seem very unrealistic.

What was not unrealistic was Atlas and Lily running into each other again after years apart. I live in a town where everyone feels only once removed and I can't go anywhere without seeing a face I recognise. So, believable for me, even though the setting is America.

Making the reader fall in love with Ryle was a very important part of this novel. Each situation Ryle hurt her was not black and white from inside the situation, until you take the facts from the emotions. He hit her. More than once. Perhaps the feeling that your partners anger is justified to your own actions is just a familiar feeling to me. The reasoning that "if I just didn't do X, he wouldn't be upset so it's my fault". This thought pattern is NOT OKAY and you are not responsible for someone else's reaction and behaviour.

I loved diving into this horrible situation, showing how women get trapped in abusive relationships because of all the love that is there. Good people can do bad things but that doesn't make the bad things okay. You can't turn off love after a fight, not even a physical one. Such a powerful and important message.

I want to recommend this book to anyone who loves a book to cry to. This feels like a moral story that every woman should read, just like turtle and the hare moral story that persistence wins, to show what abuse can look like in a loving relationship and how to find the power to stand up for yourself and leave. What would you say to your daughter if she was in this situation?

I acknowledge that I have focussed on men hitting women in a heterosexual relationship but of course the opposite can happen and abuse can happen in gay relationships too. I'm just focussing on this because it's the version of abuse that was told in this novel but the existence of this story in no way erases all the other ways abuse in an intimate relationship can occur.

This book is exactly my kind of book. The book that covers the worst experience someone goes through in their life, and how to survive it with a realistic and hopeful ending. Makes me feel that I can go through the worst life has to offer and be okay.

TL:DR
A wonderful cry-your-heart-out novel, romance with a strong warning message that I believe all women should read, just in case.