Title: It Ends With Us

Author: Colleen Hoover

Series: N/A

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary

Published: August 2nd 2016 by Atria Books

Rating: 2/5 stars ★★

“Just because someone hurts you doesn’t mean you can simply stop loving them. It’s not a person’s actions that hurt the most. It’s the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”

SYNOPSIS:

Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.

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, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

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.

MY REVIEW:

2 of 5 stars to It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

★★

Let me tell you firsthand that I do no like Colleen Hoover so this review is going to be biased against her no matter how I try not to do that.

When I started “It Ends With Us”, I was already apprehensive because my past experience with “Slammed” (Hoover’s first book), was not good. It bored me. I tried reading it three times before I gave up and decided that her writing style was just not for me.

But my sister bought this book and told me it was good and I should give it a try. Who am I to pass up a free book?

So I picked it up and started reading. The first few chapters made me cringe. God, Hoover’s writing just isn’t doing it for me, still. But never mind that. I continued and eventually finished. The verdict: it wasn’t that bad.

The first three quarters of the book had me either eye-rolling or screaming ‘what the fck?’. The urge to thwack Lily (the MC) was a constant feeling. But as it neared the end, everything made sense. The message of the book became clear.

Hoover gave different faces to the abused and the abuser from what we are used to. It’s actually ingenious of her to introduce her readers first to Ryle. By doing that, she made readers think that Ryle is the ‘hero/lead guy’ and when one is the hero, readers naturally develop a bias towards him.

But I did not like Ryle—he was another cringe-worthy character. Having said that, I had sympathy for him because of what he went through and continues to go through. It’s my one weakness—when a character or an actual person has mental illness. I was actually sad when Lily ended things with him (LMAO the irony!) but of course I understand where she’s coming from and she did the right thing.

Through Ryle, Hoover showed that not all abusers are just plain evil. While some are indeed psychopaths, there are some who are victims themselves that made them who they are now.

And through Lily and Jenny (Lily’s mother), Hoover gave an asnwer to that ever persistent question: “why can’t you just leave him?” As twisted and complicated as it sounds, it’s not impossible to still love a person even after he’s abused you.

People are made up of a hundred different shades of gray. It’s not as easy as black and white. Most of the time, it’s not just good or evil. There are miles of in-between.

I just wish Ryle gets a second chance. I hope he finds that one person who can help him heal from wounds and love him enough to stay. Twice now I’ve read about abusers like him (the other one is Cooper from the book “Lucas” by Jay McLean) who had dark histories that made them the way they are now but I don’t think they’re a hopeless case. They just need someone strong enough to make them overcome their evil.

It Ends With Us started weak but ended strong. It even made me cry but while the ending was amazing, the rest of it was just not. The writing is still very much mediocre so over-all, a 2-star for me.