It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
My rating: 3 of 5 stars**EDIT**
I downed my rating for the book from four to three stars after watching the 2024 film adaptation. When I received a visual representation, I couldn’t help thinking, “It isn’t that the actors are doing a bad job; it’s just that they’re not working with great original material.” Also, my utter disdain for this book’s sequel left a bad taste in my mouth regarding the characters and the entire storyline.
Anyway, the original review for the four-star rating is below.
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Well, here I am, finally arriving however many years late to this Colleen Hoover party everyone seems to be talking about... I had mixed feelings about this and struggled to decide between three or four stars because there are a lot of things I dislike about this book. I ultimately settled on four stars because it successfully made me tear up and invoked the empathetic feelings Hoover wanted to get out of me.
I appreciate when fiction addresses difficult topics, but I do not think something marketed as a romance novel was the best place to address something like (view spoiler). Then again, maybe it has led to more people reading about it than would have otherwise. It’s just that the key takeaways seem problematic since it is branded and read as a romance.
My biggest problem is that I feel like Atlas’s presence took away from the book’s resolution. I loved Atlas and Lily’s love story, but I wish it had been a completely separate book. As it was, it added the frivolity of a typical love triangle to a serious issue. While Lily’s decision (view spoiler) did not have anything to do with Atlast directly, his presence could not be separated from it because he was so integral to the story as it was presented. I think it would have been much more empowering to Lily’s character if there hadn’t been a knight in shining armor she could run to. Most women in similar situations do not have that privilege, and I found it sad that this fictional woman’s liberation (view spoiler) felt so dependent on another man. In the note at the end of the book, Hoover herself acknowledges that her mother did not have that benefit. I wish that the story had focused solely on Lily and Ryle and that her choices were completely free of another love interest.
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Here’s a brief summation of my thoughts on the main characters:
- Lily: Ah, Lily. You well-intentioned dumb-dumb. I can relate to you in a lot of ways. But thankfully, it’s more in the way of going too far in naive attempts to help the homeless and not in the way of falling in love with dudes who are engaging in physically violent behavior from the moment I first lay eyes on them. Also, you have the worst taste in TV shows and movies.
- Atlas: Your name is way too on the nose and cheesy, and your entire character is convenient and contrived, but I can’t help but love you because that’s literally what you were designed for.
- Ryle: Ew. Ew. Eeeeew. Too bad you can’t use your neurosurgeon skills to dislodge the stick that got implanted so far up your bum that it penetrated your brain. Trauma to us never excuses trauma by us.
- Lily’s Dad: Ibid., but you can’t even hide behind the neurosurgeon veneer. I’m looking forward to Lily’s book titled I’m Glad My Dad Died à la Jennette McCurdy.
- Lily’s Mom: I am glad your daughter gained the empathy for you that you deserved even though it’s depressing she had to repeat the cycle to get there. But some of your decisions still don’t make sense to me.
- Allysa and Marshall: I wish you could spring to life outside of the book and become my real-life rich couple friends.
𝓟.𝓢. This review was crossposted from Goodreads because it contains actual thoughts rather than a typically facetious single-sentence remark. View all my book ratings and pointless takes on Goodreads or The StoryGraph.
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