Reviewed by M. Koopmans, August 2022
Colleen Hoover’s novel It Ends With Us is an adult romance novel that discusses several deeper topics through the life of Lily Bloom. The novel starts with Lily meeting Ryle on the roof of his sister’s apartment building. From there, the book takes place through the next several months and years documenting their relationship. The book also goes back in time to Lily’s prior high school relationship with a boy named Atlas, outlining their relationship and Lily’s earlier life as well.
This book is very popular on various social media platforms right now and for good reason. This book was incredible! While this is true, the novel does touch on some possibly triggering topics such as domestic abuse and violence, suicide (breifly), alcohol abuse, attempted rape, and depression. If these topics are triggering to you I would err on the side of caution while reading. Even though these topics are super heavy, Colleen Hoover does a very good job portraying them in her novel. Readers can actually feel Lily’s pain trying to decide whether to stay with her abuser due to Hoover purposefully making him likeable. In many ways, this makes Lily’s experience much more realistic as he is not immediately made out to be the bad guy. Overall, if you are a fan of dramatic romance novels I believe this is a book you should check out (plus if you like it the prequel It Starts with Us is released on October 18th 2022!)