I can say without any hesitation that I absolutely devoured “It Ends with Us”. It took me around a day to read this book and this book changed my life.
The way the book tackled the complex topic of domestic abuse while highlighting how hard it is to face those kinds of challenges for someone in that situation. It is also something that is highly personal to Colleen Hoover and her family and while it would have been extremely emotional to write, I deeply appreciate and admire the courage that she had to get up and write this novel.
This book is the perfect mix of dark, funny, and romantic. It follows the story of a florist whose life gets disrupted when her childhood love shows up again. It illustrates how certain relationships are not meant to last. Honestly the way the blurb of the book was written, you can easily get confused with who the bad guy actually is, I know that I certainly feel into the trap. I was under the impression that the Atlas (her childhood love) was actually the one who broke apart a peaceful and loving marriage. I’ve never been more wrong.
Lily is shown to be a part of a viscous domestic violence cycle that started with her parents and then finally ended with her just in time for her daughter to be saved.
I will be eternally grateful that I decided to pick this book up when I did. It broke me in all the worst ways and ended with me sobbing uncontrollably, but it also had me smiling and laughing along with the characters. The messages the book shares are definitely not for the faint hearted due to the topics that are broached. And I would recommend the book for mature readers.
As for the book structurally – impeccable. It transitions between events in past and present really smoothly and moves the story along nicely without any unnecessary gaps and pauses. The dynamics between the characters were really enjoyable and I absolutely adored the way that the friendship of Alyssa and Lily was portrayed. It was definitely one of those friendships where the reader starts to long for something like that. I also love how Colleen Hoover foreshadows certain events that haven’t happened by placing the vaguest hints. Everything in the novel is done so deliberately. Something mentioned on page 12 can be a huge reveal on page 220 and you never would have guessed it. And while there was a certain romance arc between Atlas and Lily, I didn’t feel like it overpowered the story, unlike most books where the main focal point is the budding romance.
The plot felt very character-driven and the characters didn’t feel two-dimensional. It really focused on each of the character’s flaws and personality traits without sugar-coating anything. By using real life events that had happened with her mother, Colleen Hoover was able to give us a perspective about what truly happens in domestic abuse situations. She gave us the cold, hard facts and that’s just another thing I loved about the book.
This novel raises awareness of how people who are experiencing or have experienced such trauma really feel. It accurately depicts how difficult it is to escape such settings. Not only that, but how to recognize one when you’re in one. Colleen Hoover constructs the novel so that we experience every emotion that the protagonist, Lily Bloom, experiences. Personally, this has to be one of my favorite books of all time and arguably one of Colleen’s best works.