While catching up with reviews, I am surprised that this is still in queue; I feel like I wrote and posted it already. But from my notes and memory, I will let you know that while Colleen Hoover and It Ends with Us is gracing the window dressing of bookstores across America, I was not into this, her most famous book. I found the writing to be subpar, the plot disjointed, and the characters distasteful, though I am still intrigued by Hoover’s personal story and very happy for her. I also would say I never have to read another Hoover—while millions continue to devour them—but I am committed to trying out Verity in the near future.

It Ends with Us is the story of Lily and—well, we’re left guessing who the other half of the “us” is until the, ahem, end. There are two obvious possibilities here: Ryle, the supercharged-hottie-neurosurgeon who Lily meets and then re-meets in an unconventional conversation which can only lead to an unconventional relationship; and Atlas, her high school friend who we meet in flashbacks to a romance that we know is going to end horribly. But then Lily’s dad dies, Atlas shows back up, and Lily decides to go for her dream of owning an alternative flower shop, leading her to that re-meet and down a messy, undulating drain of back-and-forths and intentions versus reality. What happened to Atlas when Lily was a teen? And will Ryle stick with his no-dating rule or succumb to his feelings for the feisty Lily? Things get reeeeeeally complicated.

I want to tell you, straight off, that one of the main themes in It Ends with Us is domestic violence. I don’t know why this is some sort of secret which is not on the cover copy or almost all the write-ups and reviews I’ve seen. Sharing that is not giving anything away; it’s not a spoiler, though I suppose it is more exciting to discover all the secrets of the novel as you go. However, this can be said of most novels, and still we give people a clue as to what they are about to read. Why? Because then they’ll want to read it. Yup. But also, maybe, because they’ll know if they don’t want to read it, for whatever reason. The thing is, there are several relationships that could be dealing with the theme of domestic violence in various ways and the reader has to wait awhile for the deets to unveil themselves, but I think it’s unfair—maybe unsafe for some—not to be up front about this. There are scenes of domestic abuse and rape, and plenty of talking about it. It takes this book from the usual romance to a more women’s fiction kind o’ feel, and also probably what makes many women (and men?) love this particular story.

Personally, I found It Ends with Us boring at times. I never really got to know the characters, especially as experienced (as opposed to told; Hoover told me what these characters were like, sometimes, but I didn’t have a subtle getting-to-know-them experience and felt basically uninitiated, in the end). There weren’t enough friends in the book, either, which would have helped to flesh out the main-er characters, and the few who were there didn’t do nearly enough. I did enjoy how I didn’t see things coming, the plot unconventional in more ways than one. But I also didn’t really get the (not-experienced) characters or like them, much of the time—I even found them laughable (when I wasn’t disgusted with them) and that’s not what Hoover was going with in a domestic abuse (and romance, girl power, etc.) story. I was like, “Run, Lily, run!” from the first ridiculous meeting/scene. Can we call that first scene a meet-cute? Because it wasn’t at all cute to me. I was actually pretty grossed out by it. Throughout the story, I was convinced these people were hot for each other, but romance and love were a much harder sell with more telling than showing and long-winded, sorta dry passages. Which is also why I thought many of the sex scenes were borderline blech: I didn’t feel like there was an emotional build-up or a narrative reason for the steamy scenes to be there. Some of them? Sure. But certainly not all of them. I know I’m not in line with some readers and what they want from a romance, but surely some readers can identify with wanting justification for any scene, including erotic ones. Titillating? Sure. Off-putting? Yes, that too, in some circumstances. (I was also creeped out by some of these scenes in Outlander. My primary reason appears to be the health of the relationship and/or individual.)

For the first half of the book, I was not even really enjoying reading it. But by the end, it had almost converted me by being different, surprising, and trying to be thoughtful. I wouldn’t go back and not read it, but I am not convinced I ever need to read another Colleen Hoover. (My daughter has convinced me to give Verity a try, in the future, as I said above.) After reading Hoover’s endnotes about how she came to write about domestic abuse, I realized that anything I ended up liking in this book (except the unpredictability of the story-telling) was not going to return in her other stories. Those surprising twists of narration and plot are not enough to bring me back if I have to also read Hoover’s writing and deal with more of her characters. Something about it felt (yes, boring, as I said, but also) claustrophobic. Perhaps it is because of the present tense, though I have forgiven present-tense before. I was annoyed by it; it made some sense considering there are a number of flashbacks. Wait, no, it doesn’t make sense, because the flashbacks are epistolary and in italics. So…

And perhaps I should mention the Ellen letters, since they seem to invite either joy or spite from readers. The flashbacks telling the teen story of Lily and Atlas are told through old entries that Lily had written in a journal—in the form of letters to Ellen Degeneres. Yeah, it’s a little weird. I was torn between really liking this little, random touch and wishing Hoover had created a fictional famous person. And in the end, there is no reason for the device, at all. Also, did Poppy feel super inconsistent to anyone else? She’s so bubbly and funny and rebellious, but she also has no social life, no attachment to home, and even the relationship with her mother doesn’t seem to be consistent from one life-stage to the next. Also-also, something felt off to me about the messaging in this book. Like just because one character has been in therapy for a long time means they are now past redemption? And there’s no attempt at change (like, after the other person has moved on at a safe distance, but still…)? It felt… emotionally unfinished, somehow. Like we were almost there, but a sour note was still playing in the background, which shouldn’t surprise me too much because on many levels this book is just a cheesy, not amazingly-written, romance novel and that’s how the cover copy sold it to me. But then there’s something in it that’s tugging at deeper things, wanting to have a chat with some of these women about real life (which Hoover says is the point of the book, to encourage/empower women in domestic abuse situations). Hmm… (There’s also a very small scene where suicide is taken kinda lightly.)

So no, not for me, though clearly for everyone else in this country and beyond it. Colleen Hoover is the name in romance or women’s fiction, right now. She’s making like a billion dollars and I (and plenty of others) have been paying attention to her because she came outa nowhere (meaning she was writing self-published books out of her trailer home while raising kids and working in social work and teaching before a publishing house took her seriously and, something like ten years later, BookTok catapulted her into fame and fortune). Like I said, so happy for her. But I don’t need to read a bunch of her books. I’m a fan of her success, but not It Ends with Us.

QUOTES:

“I can’t be upset that I’m not enough to make a guy want to remap all of his life goals” (p75).

“No matter how convinced you are that your life will turn out a certain way, all that certainty can be washed away with a single change in tide” (p209).

“You are my wife. I am supposed to be the one who protects you from the monsters. I’m not supposed to be one” (p241).

“People spend so much time wondering why the women don’t leave. Where are all the people who wonder why the men are even abusive? Isn’t that where the only blame should be placed?” (p274).

“I think that’s one of the biggest signs a person has matured—knowing how to appreciate things that matter to others, even if they don’t matter very much to you” (p280).

“I’m beginning to think closure is a myth” (p307).

“Sometimes even grown women need their mothers’ comfort so we can just take a break from having to be strong all the time” (p331).

“If [name] truly loves you, he wouldn’t allow you to take him back. He would make the decision to leave you himself so that he knows for a fact he can never hurt you again” (p336).

“When you experience it firsthand, it isn’t so easy to hate the person who mistreats you when most of the time they’re your godsend” (p341).

“And as hard as this choice is, we break the pattern before the pattern breaks us” (p360).

“Cycles exist because they are excruciating to break. It takes an astronomical amount of pain and courage to disrupt a familiar pattern” (p360).

MOVIE:

The movie is in production, but has been put on pause during the WGA writer’s strike (and now SAG strike) of 2023.