Audiobook Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Book info:
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.  

2013 Truman Possibility 11: Okay For Now by Gary D. Schmidt

Wow, that is the first thing that comes to mind when I think of this book that I just finished.  I loved this.  Such a good story!  I'm going to have to go back and read The Wednesday Wars now.  Which won a Newbery Honor, so it must really be good.
We start out with our main character, Doug Swieteck.  Doug's family is not great.  His father is abusive, one older brother is away in Vietnam in the war after getting into trouble with the law.  His other older brother is hanging around with delinquent types and is also abusive to Doug, even stealing one of Doug's most prized possessions, a hat autographed by Joe Pepitone of the NY Yankees.  Their dad starts a fight with his boss, and of course gets fired, along with getting beat up.  So they have to move, to Marysville in upstate New York.
To Doug this new place is a dump. It's smaller than their apartment in NY so he now has to share a bedroom with his brother.  And his friend Holling gave him Joe Pepitone's jacket as a going away gift.  So now Doug has to try to hide that so his brother won't steal that too.  And already Doug can feel how people will treat him.  As if he's a thug.  In fact, the first girl he really meets, Lillian Spicer, or Lil as she prefers to be called, even calls him a skinny thug.  but their relationship is a bit of a love/hate friendship.  At school he can tell how the teachers feel about him, and he throws his brother's attitude right back at them too.  But the first place he finds some acceptance is in the library.  Not because he loves to read, but because he finds a book of Audubon pictures of birds, and he starts to learn to draw with one of the librarians, Mr. Powell.  Not all the teachers are bad at first, his last teacher of the day, his science teacher, Mr. Ferris.  And Lil's father gives Doug a job, delivering groceries on Saturdays.  He meets a lot of people on his route.  Some who think he needs more food and feed him.  Some who want him to help out around the house with changing light bulbs and such.
But that all changes when the police accuse his brother Chris of breaking into Mr. Spicer's store.  Now Doug knows he didn't do it because Chris was in bed that whole night in the same room that they share now.  But the police don't seem to believe.  And now the townspeople, including the principal have once again turned a suspicious eye on Doug too.  First he refuses to read out loud in class, and he won't say why.  But the librarian, Mr. Powell, figures out that Doug can't read.  He lets Miss Cowper know, and she sets up a time to work with him, without making it known that is what is going on.  He's also having trouble in PE.  Coach Reed, who is back from the war, doesn't seem to be able to get away from his past.  And he doesn't like the attitude that Doug gives him.  He keeps trying to make Doug play on the skins team, but Doug doesn't want to, he keeps trading with people or sneaking over to the shirts team.  but then, the coach has had it.  And he rips Doug's shirt off in class.  Only to find the tattoo that Doug's dad "gave" him for a birthday present.  And while the other kids laugh at first, they soon feel like the Coach is being a bully.
And, to make things even more complicated, Doug's brother is coming home from the war.  He's not written any letters himself, but the letters they do receive say that he's coming back and won't look the same.  Turns out he's lost both legs, and his head must have been in a fire or explosion, because his eyes are covered with bandages.  It's a lot for poor Doug to have to deal with, along with trying to be a normal boy, and have a crush on a normal girl.
I won't give anymore away.  You have to read it.  Really, you should.  The title fits perfect.  Every time Doug thinks things are going well, he knows that something bad is coming, so things are always "okay for now".  And isn't that the way it always feels anyway?  Like things seem good, but something bad always has to come along and mess it up?  At least my life seems that way.  But such a good story.  Such good things happen even throughout all the bad things.  Heartwarming, while tugging at your heart as well.  Such a good read, I couldn't wait to pick it back up whenever I had to put it down.

Gateway 8: North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

This was a really good book. The main character is Terra. Both she and her brothers are named after map related things because her father was a mapmaker. A humiliated mapmaker as he bought into a fake map supposedly from ancient China. Her brothers are both old enough that they are away at college or out on their own, and Terra is in high school. Her mom is overweight, and her dad is hateful and cruel to her and her mother. And Terra has one other strike against her, a huge port wine stain birthmark on her face. She's learned how to cover it with makeup as she's gotten older, in fact, she has a very hot boyfriend. Terra's outlet is art. She creates collages that represent people and things in her life. When a guest speaker at school gives Terra a suggestion of a new laser surgery that is supposed to fix this type of birthmark, Terra decides to try once more to get rid of this defect. On the way back home from the first treatment, it is a snowy, icy day, and they have an accident. The other car involved includes a Chinese boy named Jacob, and his adopted mom. Jacob looks like a goth, but Terra sees he has a cleft lip scar. This is why Jacob was probably given up in China as normally boys are not adopted.

Jacob and Terra connect, as do Jacob's mom and Terra's mom. After a bad holiday experience with her brothers, Terra's oldest brother invites her and her mom to visit him in China where he works. Jacob and his mom choose to go along, as they keep trying to visit the orphanage he came from, but keep hitting brick walls. The trip is a growing experience for all involved. And in a good way, they all come back changed. But Terra must decide if she wants to give up the "perfect" boyfriend that she doesn't "deserve" with her looks for someone like Jacob, who she has instantly connected with, as he just seems to "get" her.

Awesome, awesome story. I look forward to reading more by this author.