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A review by samanthaardenlockheart
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
5.0
There are spoilers in this review. Proceed with caution. ♥️
Before I begin this review, this book contains triggering content related to domestic abuse. Here is the Domestic Violence hotline: 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. ♥️
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover has completely wrecked my heart. As someone who only started getting back into reading over this past year, I am always reminded of the power that immersing yourself in a book has. You truly feel directly every character’s emotion, heartache, and longing. Following the three main characters Lily Bloom, Ryle Kincaid, and Atlas Corrigan, It Ends with Us is a story that is supposed to make your heart ache. It is supposed to make you sob. It is supposed to make you question everything you thought you knew about your life, and what love truly is. It is supposed to make you feel broken. Because these are all the types of things so many people across the world have dealt with. Even I have personally experienced dealt with a great amount of hurt and pain in my own life. Going through difficult seasons on this journey of being alive can remind people that humans are all so imperfect, yet they are resilient at the same time.
Firstly, I will begin with twenty-three-year-old Lily Bloom. Throughout all of her childhood, Lily had to endure living with her abusive father who would physically and emotionally harm her mother. She witnessed and saw him being an absolute monster of a man, and then in the blink of an eye, he would become the sweetest and most tender-loving man you could imagine. Lily’s only example of marriage was her parents’—but it was wrought with a cycle of abuse that her mother took most of the brunt of. He caused physical and emotional abuse, which meant that Lily held a strong heart toward him. She always felt angry with her mother for staying with someone so violent and the true opposite of a man who is supposed to truly love his wife. At the beginning of this novel, the audience learns that Lily’s father passed away from cancer and was not physically capable of abuse for the final years of his life.
However, of the most important parts of this story involves Lily’s past. When she was a young teenager, she met a boy who was three years older than her. His name is Atlas Corrigan. He is a handsome, young boy with light hair and piercing blue eyes. Her past with him is documented through a series of special diary entries she kept in a box from all those years ago. What made their relationship unconventional was that he was homeless, and the majority of the time they spent together was in secret. Atlas’s mother had kicked him out of the house, and he was already eighteen. If Lily’s father found out she was bringing a boy into his home each day, he would never forgive her and would likely bring physical harm to Atlas without a doubt. Even though he needed help and even though he was completely innocent. If anything, this continues to show how awful of a person her father was. She was so scared of him. I could feel that fear directly through these diary entries. Yet despite that fear, Lily’s love for Atlas was so much stronger. She started actually inviting him over to her house during the winter months since he had no warm place to go except for the abandoned home next door. He would only be there for about an hour, give or take, so she would send him back to the abandoned house with warm blankets and lots of food. Lily could not bear to think about him being cold. Over time, they slowly started to bond deeper and learn different things about one another. Of course, this resulted in Lily and Atlas falling in love. Yet there is even more heartache and tragedy when we learn that Atlas is going to be staying with his uncle in Boston until he graduates, and then he is going to the Marines and will be leaving their hometown of Plethora, Maine. It is heartbreaking for Lily to realise that he was leaving and that it was for the better since he needed to take care of himself. There are many intimate scenes throughout these diary entries that had me crying so much. It is so unfortunate that they had to separate because of their circumstances. Despite Lily living with an abusive father and Atlas being homeless, I could really feel how deeply they loved one another. She helped him at a time in his life when no one else would, and it not only changed his life but saved it; he made her feel less alone while living with an abusive father.
Now, in the current time period of It Ends with Us, Lily Bloom meets Ryle Kincaid on the top of a rooftop apartment complex—of all the places you could meet someone. He is tall, beautiful, and masculine with broad shoulders and dark hair (this is a trope I will never get tired of). And so, they both awkwardly have their first conversation. It is pretty clear that for two people to be up on a rooftop, they must really be going something and want to have time to clear their minds. Thus, Lily and Ryle talk about their pasts in the form of “naked truths” and get to know one another very quickly. She talks about her abusive dad and how she used to love someone who was homeless. Then, she learns that he is actually a neurosurgeon, which means he is quite a few years older than her. He is on the rooftop after dealing with a traumatic incident in the hospital that involved two brothers playing with a gun. They also seem to develop a very strong emotional and sexual attraction to one another, however, Lily is not interested in having a one-night stand with him. Ryle is not interested in relationships. Obviously, they are not compatible long-term. After this night, they do not see one another again for almost six straight months. Over that time, Lily opens her dream flower business with the help of her brand-new best friend, Allysa. She is just thriving in her life at this point because this has been something she always wanted, and it quickly becomes a complete success. Then, she finds out that Allysa has a brother named Ryle Kincaid, and it is during these moments that the course of her life changes. Lily and Ryle’s attraction is still as present as it was the night they first met six months prior, and he is just as insistent in wanting to sleep with her. She is undoubtedly drawn to Ryle because she has never felt so viscerally desired by a man. They eventually do sleep together, and they agree to go on a “trial run” of dating, which is a big step for Ryle since he was previously not into a commitment before Lily. Before either of them knows it, they become boyfriend and girlfriend. Their romance is so wholesome, spicy and addicting to read that with every chapter I just kept falling deeper and deeper in love with everything Ryle and Lily shared together.
Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse. During a romantic weekend of drinking wine and making dinner in Lily’s apartment, Ryle accidentally takes a hot casserole out of the oven without oven mittens, causing it to shatter all over the floor. The scene is so romantic, but when this happens, it instantly switches to tension and fear. It is clear that Ryle has injured himself on the hot pan and broken glass, but this is especially troubling since his entire career depends on his hands. He is a neurosurgeon, after all. When this happens, Lily is still laughing at the situation because she was drinking and probably was anticipating him laughing about this too. But he’s not. Ryle Kincaid is angry, and he is scary. Within a matter of seconds, he slammed his arm into Lily, shoving her to the ground and causing her to have injuries. My heart broke during this scene. I did not cry because instead, I was afraid, too. Lily feels like her world is shattering in these moments. She is confused and can not believe her loving boyfriend physically harmed her when everything was completely fine just moments before. Ryle immediately apologized and got her cleaned up and did his best to tend to her injuries. From this point on, their relationship would never be the same. It went back to normal after this incident, but it was not for long. After the first incident of physical abuse, when everything seemed “normal,” they went to a restaurant called Bib. To add fuel to this already burning dumpster fire, Atlas is the chef and owner of Bib’s. There was a restaurant scene where Atlas and Ryle physically attacked one another when Atlas saw the injuries to Lily’s face. Of course, Lily tried explaining to Atlas that it was an accident, but deep down, he did not believe her. It is at this point that Ryle realizes that Atlas is the homeless boy Lily slept with when she was a teenager, and he is absolutely unhinged when he finds this out. Two more incidents of physical abuse ensue, but I will spare the details of the second and third, which were both gutting. In the third incident, Ryle had found a magnet on the fridge that said, “Boston,” on it. He had also found Lily’s box of diary entries about Atlas and some of the gifts she has from him. Ryle is jealous and angry because he thinks Lily still wants to be with Atlas instead of him. This is where the third scene of abuse happens, but I am not going to repeat it here.
After the third time, Lily does the only thing she possibly can. She calls Atlas and tells him that she needs help. He brings her to the hospital where she is examined for her injuries, because this time, they are very severe. While at the hospital, she finds out that she is pregnant which shatters her world. Lily is pregnant with the baby of the man who physically abuses her. Such a realization is traumatizing in and of itself, but she still has time to process it. She has resorted to staying with Atlas for a few days since it is not safe for her to go back where Ryle might find her. At this point, he was scheduled to go to Cambridge for a work opportunity for three months, which gave Lily the freedom to eventually go back there once she was certain he was gone. Staying with Atlas was very healing for her since it brought back positive memories, and Lily felt very comforted with being around him. Unsurprisingly, there are definitely unresolved feelings between both of them. Atlas wants nothing more than to be with her, but with her pregnancy and complicated relationship with Ryle, he knows that is not a possibility. The time comes when she decides to leave his house, and a line from this book that I will never forget that Atlas tells Lily is this: “In the future…if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again…fall in love with me.”
Eventually, Lily has the task of telling Allysa and her mother about being in an abusive relationship with Ryle, and this is hard for clear reasons. Allysa cares about him so much, and her mother would be so heartbroken to learn that her daughter is now in the same situation she was in for so long. During both instances, they both take Lily’s side, which is definitely what should have happened. Neither of them makes Lily feel guilty about what has happened to her. In this part of the book, Lily is still grappling with her emotions about loving Ryle so deeply despite all of the pain he has caused her. She misses him and all she can remember are the good moments in their relationship. Eventually, Ryle finds out that she is pregnant when he comes back from Cambridge three months later. This makes it even harder for Lily to want to move on from him, even though she knows she has to. She can see how utterly devastated Ryle is to know that he will never be her husband again, nor will his child be raised in the same home as her. He has a sense of false hope, but I kind of started figuring out how this was going to end for him. I feel so bad for Ryle in this situation, too. Part of me thinks that he has suddenly changed, but Lily has every right to never allow him in her life again. The fact that she decided to give him a chance at having a relationship with their future baby. Once she gives birth to her beautiful baby girl, Emerson (named after Ryle’s late brother), she firmly decides to divorce Ryle once and for all. Lily is not letting her baby go through what she went through.
During the epilogue, Lily runs into Atlas again while she is out with her baby, Emerson, in the stroller. This scene is deeply touching and painful, for more reasons than I can express in words. Atlas clearly falls in love with her baby and is so glad to see that Lily is no longer married to an abusive man. Even the emotions are so hard to explain, despite this entire review I have written. While I still have love in my heart for Ryle Kincaid, I know it is not worth even a few moments of the pain Lily had to go through to have him. I just can not say whether or not I would be as strong as her, if I was in her position. I get attached to people I love so easily. It takes a lot of vulnerability to admit this, but I might have forgiven Ryle many more times than Lily did. But there is a chance I wouldn’t. I once loved someone who was emotionally toxic for me—not abusive at all—but it could have gotten to the point where it might have become that. This book gives me reassurance and clarity that I made the right decision by leaving someone who made me feel hurt, and someone who could not love me the way I needed to be loved, no matter how strongly I felt for him. I just should have done it a lot sooner than I did. I may not be able to control how much I loved him, but I could control whether I would allow the cycle of him emotionally harming me to continue. And I am very fucking proud of myself for doing that. Leaving someone who is toxic to you is so much harder than I could ever explain. I would even say it is one of the hardest things I ever had to go through. This book did an excellent job of highlighting what it is like to love someone like that. If you are reading this, and you find yourself in an abusive relationship, I know that you can get out. Re-read the chapters and diary entries about Lily and Atlas over and over again. That is the kind of love you deserve.
All things being said, this book is truly profound and I appreciate the ending so much. It is an emotional rollercoaster, but so is real life. Thank goodness Lily has Atlas because he is probably the reason she and the future of her baby were saved. Atlas was probably her light in the depths of darkness and a world of hurt, just like she was once his light. At the end of this highly emotional scene, another quote that made me cry my little heart out is: “You can stop swimming now, Lily. We finally reached the shore.”
Thank you for reading my thoughts on this deeply emotional and bittersweet story. ✨
Before I begin this review, this book contains triggering content related to domestic abuse. Here is the Domestic Violence hotline: 800-799-7233 or text START to 88788. ♥️
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover has completely wrecked my heart. As someone who only started getting back into reading over this past year, I am always reminded of the power that immersing yourself in a book has. You truly feel directly every character’s emotion, heartache, and longing. Following the three main characters Lily Bloom, Ryle Kincaid, and Atlas Corrigan, It Ends with Us is a story that is supposed to make your heart ache. It is supposed to make you sob. It is supposed to make you question everything you thought you knew about your life, and what love truly is. It is supposed to make you feel broken. Because these are all the types of things so many people across the world have dealt with. Even I have personally experienced dealt with a great amount of hurt and pain in my own life. Going through difficult seasons on this journey of being alive can remind people that humans are all so imperfect, yet they are resilient at the same time.
Firstly, I will begin with twenty-three-year-old Lily Bloom. Throughout all of her childhood, Lily had to endure living with her abusive father who would physically and emotionally harm her mother. She witnessed and saw him being an absolute monster of a man, and then in the blink of an eye, he would become the sweetest and most tender-loving man you could imagine. Lily’s only example of marriage was her parents’—but it was wrought with a cycle of abuse that her mother took most of the brunt of. He caused physical and emotional abuse, which meant that Lily held a strong heart toward him. She always felt angry with her mother for staying with someone so violent and the true opposite of a man who is supposed to truly love his wife. At the beginning of this novel, the audience learns that Lily’s father passed away from cancer and was not physically capable of abuse for the final years of his life.
However, of the most important parts of this story involves Lily’s past. When she was a young teenager, she met a boy who was three years older than her. His name is Atlas Corrigan. He is a handsome, young boy with light hair and piercing blue eyes. Her past with him is documented through a series of special diary entries she kept in a box from all those years ago. What made their relationship unconventional was that he was homeless, and the majority of the time they spent together was in secret. Atlas’s mother had kicked him out of the house, and he was already eighteen. If Lily’s father found out she was bringing a boy into his home each day, he would never forgive her and would likely bring physical harm to Atlas without a doubt. Even though he needed help and even though he was completely innocent. If anything, this continues to show how awful of a person her father was. She was so scared of him. I could feel that fear directly through these diary entries. Yet despite that fear, Lily’s love for Atlas was so much stronger. She started actually inviting him over to her house during the winter months since he had no warm place to go except for the abandoned home next door. He would only be there for about an hour, give or take, so she would send him back to the abandoned house with warm blankets and lots of food. Lily could not bear to think about him being cold. Over time, they slowly started to bond deeper and learn different things about one another. Of course, this resulted in Lily and Atlas falling in love. Yet there is even more heartache and tragedy when we learn that Atlas is going to be staying with his uncle in Boston until he graduates, and then he is going to the Marines and will be leaving their hometown of Plethora, Maine. It is heartbreaking for Lily to realise that he was leaving and that it was for the better since he needed to take care of himself. There are many intimate scenes throughout these diary entries that had me crying so much. It is so unfortunate that they had to separate because of their circumstances. Despite Lily living with an abusive father and Atlas being homeless, I could really feel how deeply they loved one another. She helped him at a time in his life when no one else would, and it not only changed his life but saved it; he made her feel less alone while living with an abusive father.
Now, in the current time period of It Ends with Us, Lily Bloom meets Ryle Kincaid on the top of a rooftop apartment complex—of all the places you could meet someone. He is tall, beautiful, and masculine with broad shoulders and dark hair (this is a trope I will never get tired of). And so, they both awkwardly have their first conversation. It is pretty clear that for two people to be up on a rooftop, they must really be going something and want to have time to clear their minds. Thus, Lily and Ryle talk about their pasts in the form of “naked truths” and get to know one another very quickly. She talks about her abusive dad and how she used to love someone who was homeless. Then, she learns that he is actually a neurosurgeon, which means he is quite a few years older than her. He is on the rooftop after dealing with a traumatic incident in the hospital that involved two brothers playing with a gun. They also seem to develop a very strong emotional and sexual attraction to one another, however, Lily is not interested in having a one-night stand with him. Ryle is not interested in relationships. Obviously, they are not compatible long-term. After this night, they do not see one another again for almost six straight months. Over that time, Lily opens her dream flower business with the help of her brand-new best friend, Allysa. She is just thriving in her life at this point because this has been something she always wanted, and it quickly becomes a complete success. Then, she finds out that Allysa has a brother named Ryle Kincaid, and it is during these moments that the course of her life changes. Lily and Ryle’s attraction is still as present as it was the night they first met six months prior, and he is just as insistent in wanting to sleep with her. She is undoubtedly drawn to Ryle because she has never felt so viscerally desired by a man. They eventually do sleep together, and they agree to go on a “trial run” of dating, which is a big step for Ryle since he was previously not into a commitment before Lily. Before either of them knows it, they become boyfriend and girlfriend. Their romance is so wholesome, spicy and addicting to read that with every chapter I just kept falling deeper and deeper in love with everything Ryle and Lily shared together.
Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse. During a romantic weekend of drinking wine and making dinner in Lily’s apartment, Ryle accidentally takes a hot casserole out of the oven without oven mittens, causing it to shatter all over the floor. The scene is so romantic, but when this happens, it instantly switches to tension and fear. It is clear that Ryle has injured himself on the hot pan and broken glass, but this is especially troubling since his entire career depends on his hands. He is a neurosurgeon, after all. When this happens, Lily is still laughing at the situation because she was drinking and probably was anticipating him laughing about this too. But he’s not. Ryle Kincaid is angry, and he is scary. Within a matter of seconds, he slammed his arm into Lily, shoving her to the ground and causing her to have injuries. My heart broke during this scene. I did not cry because instead, I was afraid, too. Lily feels like her world is shattering in these moments. She is confused and can not believe her loving boyfriend physically harmed her when everything was completely fine just moments before. Ryle immediately apologized and got her cleaned up and did his best to tend to her injuries. From this point on, their relationship would never be the same. It went back to normal after this incident, but it was not for long. After the first incident of physical abuse, when everything seemed “normal,” they went to a restaurant called Bib. To add fuel to this already burning dumpster fire, Atlas is the chef and owner of Bib’s. There was a restaurant scene where Atlas and Ryle physically attacked one another when Atlas saw the injuries to Lily’s face. Of course, Lily tried explaining to Atlas that it was an accident, but deep down, he did not believe her. It is at this point that Ryle realizes that Atlas is the homeless boy Lily slept with when she was a teenager, and he is absolutely unhinged when he finds this out. Two more incidents of physical abuse ensue, but I will spare the details of the second and third, which were both gutting. In the third incident, Ryle had found a magnet on the fridge that said, “Boston,” on it. He had also found Lily’s box of diary entries about Atlas and some of the gifts she has from him. Ryle is jealous and angry because he thinks Lily still wants to be with Atlas instead of him. This is where the third scene of abuse happens, but I am not going to repeat it here.
After the third time, Lily does the only thing she possibly can. She calls Atlas and tells him that she needs help. He brings her to the hospital where she is examined for her injuries, because this time, they are very severe. While at the hospital, she finds out that she is pregnant which shatters her world. Lily is pregnant with the baby of the man who physically abuses her. Such a realization is traumatizing in and of itself, but she still has time to process it. She has resorted to staying with Atlas for a few days since it is not safe for her to go back where Ryle might find her. At this point, he was scheduled to go to Cambridge for a work opportunity for three months, which gave Lily the freedom to eventually go back there once she was certain he was gone. Staying with Atlas was very healing for her since it brought back positive memories, and Lily felt very comforted with being around him. Unsurprisingly, there are definitely unresolved feelings between both of them. Atlas wants nothing more than to be with her, but with her pregnancy and complicated relationship with Ryle, he knows that is not a possibility. The time comes when she decides to leave his house, and a line from this book that I will never forget that Atlas tells Lily is this: “In the future…if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again…fall in love with me.”
Eventually, Lily has the task of telling Allysa and her mother about being in an abusive relationship with Ryle, and this is hard for clear reasons. Allysa cares about him so much, and her mother would be so heartbroken to learn that her daughter is now in the same situation she was in for so long. During both instances, they both take Lily’s side, which is definitely what should have happened. Neither of them makes Lily feel guilty about what has happened to her. In this part of the book, Lily is still grappling with her emotions about loving Ryle so deeply despite all of the pain he has caused her. She misses him and all she can remember are the good moments in their relationship. Eventually, Ryle finds out that she is pregnant when he comes back from Cambridge three months later. This makes it even harder for Lily to want to move on from him, even though she knows she has to. She can see how utterly devastated Ryle is to know that he will never be her husband again, nor will his child be raised in the same home as her. He has a sense of false hope, but I kind of started figuring out how this was going to end for him. I feel so bad for Ryle in this situation, too. Part of me thinks that he has suddenly changed, but Lily has every right to never allow him in her life again. The fact that she decided to give him a chance at having a relationship with their future baby. Once she gives birth to her beautiful baby girl, Emerson (named after Ryle’s late brother), she firmly decides to divorce Ryle once and for all. Lily is not letting her baby go through what she went through.
During the epilogue, Lily runs into Atlas again while she is out with her baby, Emerson, in the stroller. This scene is deeply touching and painful, for more reasons than I can express in words. Atlas clearly falls in love with her baby and is so glad to see that Lily is no longer married to an abusive man. Even the emotions are so hard to explain, despite this entire review I have written. While I still have love in my heart for Ryle Kincaid, I know it is not worth even a few moments of the pain Lily had to go through to have him. I just can not say whether or not I would be as strong as her, if I was in her position. I get attached to people I love so easily. It takes a lot of vulnerability to admit this, but I might have forgiven Ryle many more times than Lily did. But there is a chance I wouldn’t. I once loved someone who was emotionally toxic for me—not abusive at all—but it could have gotten to the point where it might have become that. This book gives me reassurance and clarity that I made the right decision by leaving someone who made me feel hurt, and someone who could not love me the way I needed to be loved, no matter how strongly I felt for him. I just should have done it a lot sooner than I did. I may not be able to control how much I loved him, but I could control whether I would allow the cycle of him emotionally harming me to continue. And I am very fucking proud of myself for doing that. Leaving someone who is toxic to you is so much harder than I could ever explain. I would even say it is one of the hardest things I ever had to go through. This book did an excellent job of highlighting what it is like to love someone like that. If you are reading this, and you find yourself in an abusive relationship, I know that you can get out. Re-read the chapters and diary entries about Lily and Atlas over and over again. That is the kind of love you deserve.
All things being said, this book is truly profound and I appreciate the ending so much. It is an emotional rollercoaster, but so is real life. Thank goodness Lily has Atlas because he is probably the reason she and the future of her baby were saved. Atlas was probably her light in the depths of darkness and a world of hurt, just like she was once his light. At the end of this highly emotional scene, another quote that made me cry my little heart out is: “You can stop swimming now, Lily. We finally reached the shore.”
Thank you for reading my thoughts on this deeply emotional and bittersweet story. ✨