Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Published: August 2nd, 2016
Source: Digital audiobook downloaded from public library
My rating: 5 stars
Once again I know why I love Colleen Hoover. This book. I don't know if I can even express how good this book was. So often, because they are fiction, relationships work out, even dysfunctional ones like the one in this book. I can even relate it to one of my newest favorite books, the After series. But this book is how it should work out. While it may actually not be realistic for how people do handle this in the real world, it is the way it should be. No matter how much I believed that at first the problems were accidents, and that Ryle wasn't really a bad guy, soon it became exactly what those things do. And it totally helped me, as someone who has not ever been in that kind of situation, to understand where those first forgiving moments by the woman, which sound like excuses, really do make sense. Because I was there at first as well.
The main character in this is Lily. Lily grew up in a family with an abusive father. When we first meet her it is right after her father's funeral. It is at this point that she meets Ryle for the first time. Both of them are dealing with things that are very emotional for them. Ryle, as a doctor, has lost a patient, a kid, and it makes him think of something that happened in his past. Something that was one of the reasons he even became a doctor. At first they have just one chance meeting. But is this very meeting that inspires Lily to take the money she gets from her father's will and invest it in something that is one of her dreams, to open a flower shop. It is through this endeavor that Ryle will come back into her life. When Ryle's sister shows up and becomes friends with Lily, once again their paths cross. But Lily doesn't want a casual relationship, she's not that kind of girl. Ryle doesn't want any more than that. Something about Lily keeps him thinking about her, and he decides to give it a try.
Through the book we also get flashbacks to a boy in Lily's past that really was a big influence in who she has become, a boy named Atlas, who was also her first love. She runs into him while out with Ryle one night, and it really does a number. But he seems to be doing very well for himself, and has moved on. So she goes on with her relationship with Ryle, and it keeps hitting rough spots. First it is an accident where he burns his hands grabbing a pan out of the oven without an oven mitt, and when Lily goes to help him, he elbows her back, slamming her and the glass dish to the floor where she is hurt, and he is as well. This incident to me was such an accident. But what he did gave Lily flashbacks to memories of how her father had abused her, and she told Ryle that she would not be treated like that. She wouldn't be like her mother and just take the abuse. So she gives him another chance. And the relationship goes from there.
Atlas does come clean about things for him not being quite as perfect as he's made her believe. But he makes her promise if anything ever happens again, then she is to call him for help. He leaves her his phone number. But is finding this phone number that causes yet another incident.
I won't tell you any more about how it goes. I just feel like it was done so perfectly. I don't watch The Ellen Show very often anymore. This book has so many memories of Lily watching it, as well as the diary entries that she wrote as if she was writing to Ellen, that I think Ellen should have her on the show if she hasn't. As much as I loved how it went, I still was sad that it had to be that way. But this is what you call realistic fiction. And Colleen Hoover has once again blown me away.
