It Ends With Us Review: Interesting Take on Colleen Hoover’s Book

Quick Details

• Genre: contemporary romance
• Tropes: wounded hero, opposites attract, love triangle, first love
• Age rating: mature adults ages 17 and over
• Content warnings: domestic violence (Get more It Ends With Us trigger warnings)
• Accolades: 2016 GoodReads Choice Award for Best Romance Novel, #1 New York Times bestseller, over 4 million copies sold

Plot

The premise of It Ends With Us is that the one you love the most can be the one that hurts you the most.

After growing up in small-town Maine, Lily Bloom has recently moved to the big city of Boston and started a flower shop. She’s dealing with the death of the father who abused her mother when she hits it off with a handsome neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid.
  
Ryle is a complex man — assertive, stubborn, and a bit arrogant, but also sensitive and brilliant. He seems to have a soft spot for Lily, yet he’s also averse to relationships.
  
As their love grows deeper, Lily begins to question her relationship with Ryle, while also thinking about her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy who made her feel protected. He was the one who supported her through the times when her father abused her mother.

When Atlas reappears in Lily’s life, her relationship with Ryle begins to spiral downward, leaving Lily torn.

It Ends With Us Review

Rating

Pros

Cons

More Details

It Ends With Us packs an incredibly emotional punch, leaving Lily with the gut-wrenching decision of “whether to stay or go” in the face of domestic violence. This difficult decision in a very complicated situation is what has captivated so many millions of readers for so many years.

Incidentally, I will also always have a special place in my heart for It Ends With Us. It was the book I was reading on the beach while my husband (then, boyfriend) was, unbeknownst to me, getting ready to propose.

I was SO engrossed in the storyline that I completely overlooked so many obvious signs of the momentous event that was about to occur in my life. (So, Colleen Hoover, if you ever read this, I have YOU to thank for a surprise engagement in addition to an immersive beach read.)

I shared a TikTok about it here:

Seriously, if I hadn’t been reading this exact book, I probably would have caught on. That is because It Ends With Us is so compulsively readable and emotionally engaging. The depths and darkness of the circumstances presented make you feel deeply about the characters and understand their motivations.

It Ends With Us presents the issue of domestic violence in a very real way, helping the reader understand how this can happen and why people often “stay.” And, it offers hope to survivors.

Indeed, years later now, the characters remain some of the most memorable ones about which I have ever read. In addition to the main characters, I liked how Atlas was a foil to Ryle, and how Lily’s mother could offer her insight and advice to try to break the generational cycle of abuse.

My only complaint is that it was too graphic at times for me. I struggle with “spicy” content generally, so adding to this some dark and disturbing sexual content as well made it all the more difficult for me to read.

Overall, I’m glad it’s become such a huge sensation in the years since I first read it, as it’s now been read by many millions of satisfied readers.

With themes of flowers and rebirth, it makes an especially great spring book to read.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

This It Ends With Us review of the book by author Colleen Hoover detailed the pros and cons of this bestselling book. In summary, it’s worth reading if you like fast-paced, immersive, sexually graphic, and emotional contemporary romance novels in which the main characters face very difficult situations. Particularly, the reader should be an adult able to handle graphic domestic violence content.

Buy It Ends With Us:

Up Next: Learn more about the It Ends With Us Sequel.