It Ends With Us
By: Colleen Hoover
It Ends With Us is one of those books that hooks you from the beginning. It captures your attention and pulls at your heartstrings quickly with references to strained relationships with parents, meeting strangers, and finding yourself. The storyline, the details, and the tangible, relatable lives of the characters will leave you on the edge of your seat and will take you through every emotion you have ever felt.
The main character, Lily, is strong-willed, artistic, and smart. We meet her on the heels of her father’s funeral, with whom she did not have the best of relationships. She has moved to Boston and is trying to make a life for herself, with a dream to one day own her own flower shop. We are introduced to a stranger, Ryle, that will quickly become a force of nature in Lily’s life, introducing her to both love and pain. A pain that she saw her mother experience at the hands of her father. A pain she hoped to never endure herself. A pain that could destroy her, or change her life for the better.
As Lily and Ryle’s relationship changes from acquaintances to something more, the complexity of their relationship changes too. The deeper they seem to fall in love, the more lingering questions and concerns seem to surface. Ryle, with a history of personal loss, becomes protective of Lily, and overtimes starts to display distrust in her. Lily begins to struggle with the uncertainty of her relationship with Ryle. Between instances of confrontation and questioning, she starts to question if she is in a similar situation that her mother was in with her father.
After finding her old journals, and eventually running into a boy whom she cared deeply for, Atlas, her troubles with Ryle start to grow. Questions of infidelity come up, and after one too many physical confrontations, Lily reaches to Atlas for help. While Lily tries to reconcile with her situation and Ryle, she learns she is pregnant and that she must fight to end the cycle of abuse both she and her mother have faced.
Between the very real and relatable relationships Lily, Ryle, and Atlas have, to the emotions and distress caused by abusive relationships, It Ends With Us will take you on a roller coaster. It will make you cry and it will make you feel hopeful. It sheds light on those that are victims of abusive relationships and those that are able to escape. It tugs at your heartstrings and makes you question. This book has easily become one of my favorites. It was hard to put down, and I kept wanting to turn the page and read on. Without giving too much more away, I cannot stress enough, that you need to read this book. Colleen Hoover has outdone herself, and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.
