It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

BOOK STATS

Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆
Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Audience: Adult
Format: Paperback
Length: 376 pages
Publisher: Atria Books
Release Date: August 2, 2016
Source: book swap
Triggers: domestic abuse

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 THOUGHTS

This book was heartbreaking and beautiful. I knew it was about an abusive relationship, but I was not prepared to feel such a connection to Lily! She was so hopeful and optimistic. I loved the way she went for her dreams and managed to stay strong no matter what life threw at her.

This book is so powerful and personal, and it raises awareness for the realities of domestic abuse, showing how women find themselves in abusive relationships and why so many women stay, even if they previously thought they would never put up with that. It’s hard to view forgiveness as a weakness. As a society, we need to stop blaming women for staying in abusive relationships and start holding abusers accountable. We need empathy.

This book had several scenes that were hard to read, but it was so important. The story was so well-written and compelling, I couldn’t put this book down. I was constantly drawn back into the story to see how Lily would navigate her future while dealing with her past and her present.