It Ends With Us is a novel by Colleen Hoover.
Finished on: 9.3.2024

Content Note: domestic violence

Plot:
Lily has finished college and has plans to open a flower shop in Boston. The death of her abusive father seems almost auspicious for a fresh start as well. Even though the trip back home for the funeral brings up old memories of her first love, Lily is happy to leave it all behind. Then she meets neurosurgeon Ryle. While he is hesitant to start a relationship, they can’t seem to let go of each other.

I picked up It Ends With Us in a sale a while ago, before it got BookTok famous. With the BookTok fame, my suspicions of the book were raised, seeing as it was billed as a dark romance more often than not. But this is not a romance novel, or only in the faintest sense. It is a book about surviving domestic abuse. Albeit not particularly well written, it has its heart in the right place.

After kind of brushing past a couple of BookTok takes on this novel, I was afraid this would be the epic love story of Lily and Rile and how they work through their issues, that is: domestic violence, and love conquers all. Fortunately, this is not the book Hoover has written. Having her own experiences with DV, she tried to write a story about leaving toxic relationships behind and I applaud that effort.

Unfortunately, what I can’t applaud is the writing itself. By page 10 I had already questioned a couple of grammar choices, and although I am not an English native speaker, I am reasonably certain that the grammar was just wrong. And no, this was not a stylistic device either. Generally, the writing reads more like an enthusiastic teenager’s writing than a professional writer’s.

Plus, there were some very strange scenes and character choices throughout. To give you two examples: On the more unfortunate coincidence (possibly) side, the book basically opens with the “I did not hit her” scene from The Room, with Ryle storming up on a roof and beating up a chair (not a bottle). It is a good pointer for the violence that is always present just beneath his surface, but I could only see Tommy Wiseau.

On the frankly bewildering side of things, Lily’s way of showing Ryle that she is relationship material is her giving him all the casual sex he ever wanted, convinced that she gives such great pussy, he won’t be able to give her up afterwards. (She literally tells him “I’m like a drug”, I’m not embellishing here. This is a direct quote.) The entire scene is not only so illogical, I read it five times but couldn’t make sense of it, it is also completely out of character for Lily.

I was just about ready to give up reading the book when I realized that this would not be Lily and Ryle’s epic romance, but Lily’s story of breaking free (and also finding love with another man). This was relief enough to stay with it to the end. But honestly, the biggest thing I personally got out of it was a motivational boost for my own writing, because it seriously has to be better than this.

Summarizing: important topic, bad writing.