It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover | Book Review

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It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

My rating: 3/5

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 

Publication date: 2nd August 2016

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 where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems 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.

Review: 

I jumped on the bandwagon with this book because I had a touch of FOMO. I thought it was a standard romance novel but, massive trigger warning for domestic abuse.

It Ends With Us tells the story of Lily who moves from Maine to Boston and sets up her own flower shop. She meets neurosurgeon Ryle on the rooftop of an apartment building following her father's funeral. Six months later, their paths cross again as Ryle is the brother of Alyssa, the flower shop's newest member of staff. Even though Ryle has issues from his past, he and Lily embark on a relationship.

Whilst their story develops, we hear about Lily's first love when she was a teenager, Atlas, through journal entries. 

It took until about two-thirds into this book before I really started to enjoy it. I found it hard to like the characters. I know we were meant to like Ryle at the beginning until...we weren't, but I also didn't care too much for Atlas either. I did find the journal entries being written to Ellen DeGeneres a bit strange too! 

The saving grace for this book was the wonderful job it did on the subject of domestic abuse. It was so well-explored and really pointed out why it's not so easy for women to leave but the cycle must be broken somewhere. Great character development for Lily.