Bianca

Nov 27, 2021

It Ends With Us By Colleen Hoover

TW: abuse

4/5 stars

Colleen Hoover's novel It Ends With Us is a breathtaking novel that I personally believe everyone should read during their lifetime. This story follows the main character Lily who is 23 and is living in Boston and whose dream is to start her own flower shop. This book starts off at her dad's funeral who was abusive to her mother so you can imagine what mixed emotions occured in Lily's mind at this moment. After the funeral Lily meets this handsome, smart, selfish and career-driven neurosurgeon who is messed up in his own ways and has sworn off relationships. However, this doesn't stop him from forming an obsession with Lily. This novel also includes flashbacks to Lily's childhood where she was dealing with her abusive father whilst forming a friendship with a homeless boy at her school named Atlas. Atlas is kind, caring and thoughtful and dealt with his own abusive parents and they formed a bond with each other. It follows this love triangle from Lily's point of view and her story includes difficult obstacles and breaking lots of stereotypes we as a society formed against people.

The reason I gave this book only 4 stars is because this book was kind of hard for me to get into. I thought they rushed the relationship between Ryle and Lily during the first part of the book and it seemed kind of insta love to me but, that might just be because I love a slow burn. I wasn't really connected to any character for the first 100 pages since I felt like I didn't really know any of them but, by the end I was able to understand and feell for the characters better. It does make sense though that the book starts Ryle and Lily's relationship quickly since this book is not a simple romance of these 2 characters getting together. It's much more about realistic scenarios of how some women find themselves in abusive situations.

I think this is such an important story since it does such a good job of explaining how domestic abuse affects those in and around the relationship. It really breaks down that people are not just a statistic and abuse is a real issue that happens to real people. It makes you understand how it's not a simple as it seems when people tell women "why don't you just leave your abuser". Because that is easy to say but hard to implement in real scenarios. This story goes in-depth about how difficult it is to accept that the love of your life might love you back but that won't stop their abusive behaviours. It also debunks the myths of how women "let themselves" get in these situations in which they stay with their abuser. But why does society blame the women for not being "strong" enough to leave their abuser. Why don't we talk about why men hit the women they love. This book was quite hard for me to read since I usually like reading novels about more happy or unrealistic storylines since I use reading as a form of escape. I was almost going to put this book down since it made me so uncomfortable to read but, that is the point isn't. Abuse is not pretty and there is bad shit that happens in our world and we can't turn blind eye just because things make us uncomfortable. It's important to read about these stories to make us more aware and empathetic since sadly, abuse is not uncommon.

This brings me to my next point of why this book is so personal since Hoover based this book on her own personal experience since her mom was in an abusive relationship with her father. Collen's mother left her father when Hoover was 2 and even though they were poor with the father gone, Collen's mother got them out of that abusive household which is easier said then done. Hoover based her main character Lily on her mother who was strong enough to stop the cycle of abusive that happens to girls. This must have been really hard to write for her but I'm so happy she was able to write this story to share and inform others that you can get out of abusive situations and you will be okay.

Overall, I think this book is beautifully written and really allows the reader to understand why leaving abusive scenarios is not as easy as it is to say. A big shout out to Hoover who was able to share this story and even though this is not the usual genre I like to read I will still recommend this book since it's important that this story is heard.