Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Synopsis:
Sometimes the one who loves you is the one 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, 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:
It Ends With Us is one of the most hyped-up books I’ve ever read. For me, it is an entertaining novel with a very important message, but it didn’t blow me away like it has for other reviewers.
My main issue with the book is just the way it’s written. It’s very easy to read but it felt very cheesy at times, and a bit over the top with some of the descriptions and internal/ external dialogue that Lily and other characters have. I often felt like I was reading a YA novel – no insult intended to that genre, but it sometimes felt like everything had to be spelled out for the reader. The writing style just didn’t measure up to some other brilliant books, and it wasn’t a reason for why I wanted to read more.
What I did really like was that the characters aren’t just ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Certain people have their faults – in some cases, HUGE faults – but no one is painted as all bad. It’s very like one of the lines in the book – Ryle says that there are no bad people, just people that sometimes do bad things.
As well as this, the storyline in It Ends With Us is gripping – the second part more so, as the first focuses a lot on the start of Lily and Ryle’s relationship where I felt there was too much cheesiness. I really wanted to find out what would happen.
Though I wasn’t amazed by this book, I can see why it’s so popular and I do think the story makes for tense and intriguing reading. It makes you really think about why a person would stay in a certain type of relationship. I just didn’t click hugely with the writing style or the main character Lily.