It ends with us by Colleen Hoover
Hello Books Lovers,
I finished reading this book over a week ago but I had to take a few days to digest it, to recover mentally and collect ideas. I know that one of the things I often reiterate is that I don’t get impressed so easily by booktok books, but Colleen Hoover finally bewitched me too.
Sperling & Kupfer not many days ago brought the much acclaimed book It ends with us in italy, at first I didn’t understand why everyone was so in love with this book, from a romance probably not very different from the others. Over time I then discovered that it was not just any romance but one with really important issues, domestic violence.
Still here I could not understand all the hype because I know that there are other books that address this issue and they are much more raw than this book. And then I read it, as usual without reading the plots, because yes, I judge a book by its cover, don’t lynch me for this. Then you just need to scroll a few hours on social networks to find out more about the plots of the books without reading them. At the beginning of reading I already knew that one of the characters was called Atlas, a beautiful name in my opinion, that the protagonist was Lily and that the book was set in my beloved Boston that I miss more and more every day.
I was so intrigued by this story that on its release day I went to the bookstore to get a copy and started reading it thanks to a reading group. Still I’m not really sure what to write in this review, this book was a real emotional damage. It has destroyed me in many different ways, from mid-book onwards, many times I have had to stop reading after certain phrases, closing the book and breathing to calm down.
Because you must know that, even if the scenes, the violence is not really that extreme, even if even a small thing in this situation is already extreme, what really destroyed me was the way everything was written.
I will try not to spoil, even if it won’t be easy. Lily had a very difficult childhood. Her father beat her mother, and a lot, and her mother never wanted to report it out of love. Every day Lily saw her mother, a strong woman, being beaten by a man who said he loved her because of little things that made him angry. Her father never touched her but what Lily promised was never to get together with a man like that.
Which is easier said than done, unfortunately. But first I want to tell you about Atlas, the man we all need in our lives, one who is truly capable of loving and forgiving. Atlas entered Lily’s life in high school, he was homeless, ran away from home because not even his family was the best. He and Lily bonded through this familiar connection. Atlas will also have a very particular role in the future, and after years from the release of It ends with us, the author has decided to write a book about Atlas which will be released in November.
But Lily and Atlas lost sight of each other after he joined the army. She’s been out with other guys all the way to Ryle, an ambitious neurosurgeon who will change his life and ways for her, but sadly won’t change his temper. Let’s say that saying this thing I don’t think I’m doing who knows what big spoiler because in the official plot something is said and knowing the dynamics of the story is not so much a mystery.
Ryle gets violent, he says to do it unwittingly, by mistake, but these are certainly not mistakes to be made. What destroyed me about this book is that, we would all say that Lily should leave him, but you have no idea how her love for Ryle shines through the pages. The way the author wrote this story goes into you, it was like I was feeling Ryle’s emotions, when things happened I really wanted her to leave him, but then she talked about Ryle, because it’s all in first person , and I fell in love with him again along with Lily.
In my opinion the real power of this book is not so much to explain a story of domestic violence, but to show how much one person really loves another so much that she forgives him even when he abuses. I felt Lily’s love for Ryle and suffered with her. That’s why writing this review still hurts.
Many other things happen, but the book is short, 300 pages, I have already done enough spoilers, but I would like to do one more and I ask you to close the article if you don’t want to read it because this is a big one, one of those that should be read at the end of the book, but also one of those that could convince the undecided to give a chance to this story. Initially, at the end of the reading I wanted to give four stars, but then I read the author’s note and I decided to give five stars, because what she writes in the note shows how hard it was for her to write this story.
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The story written in It ends with us is a true story, or rather it is taken from a true story, the story of Colleen Hoover’s parents. Her father beat her mother and Colleen was a young girl at the time and she happened to witness certain scenes. Now her father is dead, like Lily’s father, and the author wanted to ask her mother if she could put their story on the page. Colleen unlike Lily has found a loving husband, but I can only imagine the pain of writing something based on her parents.
She specifically said that some of the scenes, including the first abuse, is how things really happened. Perhaps also for this reason it was not a very violent and very crude book, after all it was also right, despite having made their story available to the whole world, to protect her mother and father and the love they had in any case for each other. It was this final note that broke me. I had no idea that this was a true story and when I read it it was even more devastating than everything else.
Now, this is probably the longest review I have ever written, if you have come to read it to the end thank you, and I really hope that if you are psychologically ready, you will give It ends with us a chance.
