It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover - Book Review
Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publish Date: August 2, 2016
Rating: 2.8/5
Summary(blurb): 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. With this bold and deeply personal novel, Colleen Hoover delivers a heart-wrenching story that breaks exciting new ground for her as a writer. It Ends With Us is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.
**This book review contains spoilers for this book. If you still want to read the review, go ahead. However, I strongly recommend you to read this book before reading my review.
Before I read this book I had heard that it was not a great romance book, and so I was honestly ready to be a little disappointed by this book when I read it. This book was given to me by a friend as a birthday present (not the book I hoped for but still I appreciate the gift), and after finishing it I can say that this shouldn't have been marketed as a romance book. My friend even gave it to me thinking it was a great romance story that had so much hype on Tiktok, and when she read the book she said she didn't enjoy it as much as she thought she would. Same for me-- I liked the use of motifs and how everything had a meaning, but the characters were too cringey at a few points and some other characters (like Atlas) weren't as fleshed out. In general, a little disappointing.
When I read the blurb on the back I saw the basic plot progression at once(minus abuse)-- But first of all, even before starting the main text, Ryle is a massive red flag. Just look at this part: "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."
This just says basically everything about Ryle except his abusiveness (which turns out to be his most important trait), including the fact that Ryle is not someone Lily should probably fall in love with (that's an understatement).
This book is very easy to read with a highly understandable plot progression-- Lily the main character falling in love with a walking talking red flag neurosurgeon, then opening her flower shop, and meeting Ryle again, and getting together, and so on. We get glimpses of Lily's past with Atlas through years of diary entries disguised as letters to Ellen DeGeneres in her high school years. I'm not sure a normal high schooler would do that, but well it's a novel so anything's possible. In the present Lily believes herself happy with Ryle Kincaid the young neurosurgeon (who gives off bad vibes to the reader big-time) and suddenly encounters Atlas again at a great restaurant. Then Lily's briefly stuck in this love triangle and plop, Lily and Ryle get married fast as a whirlwind for no big reason other than "I could marry you right now." "Let's do it!", and swoosh, the domestic abuse part comes in and from there it's all about the abusive relationship.
One of the good parts of this book was how it used many recurring motifs to create "ohh" moments, like how the fridge magnet mentioned in passing very early on was revealed to be the motivation for Atlas's restaurant name, and the extended metaphor of swimming throughout the book. Also the book's last page explains the significance of the title, saying that this cycle of domestic violence, it ends with us. The ongoing motif of 'swimming' is also prominent throughout the novel, with Atlas's last words to Lily and the Finding Nemo references.
Also, I liked the flashback parts to when Lily was a high schooler, writing letters to Ellen DeGeneres. It's not that I like Ellen DeGeneres (I only know she is a talk show host), and as the flashback goes it reads more like a memory than a letter, I almost forgot it was a letter once, but what I liked about it was just how Lily was rereading her journals, revisiting her tangible memories. Because doing that-- whether it be reading group chat messages from years ago or rereading a story assignment from seventh grade-- always makes you remember. They're the catalysts to bringing back memories from long ago, and it is important to remember the past. However I don't advise having journal entries about your ex boyfriend in the same room with your current husband-- Lily's mistake-- as it will probably lead to pretty bad stuff, hopefully not as bad as Ryle but still :/
Anyways, those were the only parts I liked about the book, and now for the more disappointing parts:
First of all, I think Hoover should have made the main characters meet a little bit later than the story-- I felt it was too soon having the romance characters meet, before even learning anything about their personality. A similar thing happened in All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, where the two main characters Violet and Finch met too soon for my liking. The difference between the books was that Ryle was trying to decapitate a chair, while Finch was trying to stop Violet from jumping off the school bell tower. The reason I don't like characters meeting too soon is, I'd like to know what the characters are like with their friends and other people before they meet their romantic partner and fall in love. Making the main love interests meet later in the story gives readers a chance to get to know two sides of the character, with and without a love interest. I enjoy seeing how a love interest(or any other friend for that matter) becomes a factor in changing the character's life and demeanor, but if the characters meet too soon there's no chance of that.
Another large downside of this book was that many of the characters were very flat and cliche', like Atlas and Ryle. Readers only see the good side of Atlas in this book, and are led to believe Atlas is the ultimate Good Guy She's Supposed To End Up With. It would have been better if Atlas had a bit more characterization-- It was nice to see how the author showed Atlas during his early days with Lily, but in the story there's not much else character description of Atlas except for "he's the Ideal Human". Also, Ryle falls into the cliche' category, as I have emphasized numerous times previously-- he acts like a predictable character going through the motions of the Standard Abusive Husband as seen in other literature works such as A Streetcar Named Desire (namely, the part where Stanley hits Stella and apologizes mere hours later).
Lastly, this is a totally small thing to gripe about, but these characters have no imagination. I can understand Lily Blossom Bloom running a flower shop (because Lily is self-aware about it), but naming Lily's female baby after Ryle's male brother? Emerson? It doesn't feel like honoring Ryle's brother or anything, to me it's just a halfhearted attempt to squeeze as much symbolism possible in the ending of the story. Even worse is the name Alyssa and Marshall choose for their baby-- Rylee?? It feels like Ryle isn't exactly someone to be honored, and this isn't even inserting symbolism like Emerson's name. Rylee reminds everyone too much of Ryle, and at least the spelling could have been changed to Riley or something like that. I thought fiction authors had to be creative.
In conclusion, this was an okay book-- while I certainly appreciate the gift, it was kind of disappointing with its heavily cliche characters/romance and Ryle being more scarlet flag than human from the very outset, as well as the worst baby names in history. However the motifs and "ohhh" moments made up for it, so read this if you want. You don't have to.
I would recommend this book for grade 9 or 10 and up, the book deals with a quite heavy topic (domestic abuse) and there are some graphic scenes in the book.
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