*SPOILER FREE*
Do you know those books that no matter how much time goes by you will never forget? “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover is one of those books.
The tagline alone should have warned me of this.
“Sometimes the one who loves you is the one who hurts you the most.”
“It Ends with Us” is about Lily Bloom, who hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up— she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. When she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. As she starts to question her feelings for him, the thought of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind — comes to mind. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
373 pages. In 2 days. It would have been 1 day, but stupid college got in the way. In those two days I went through a range of emotions. From being excited to sad to happy to heartbroken, “It Ends with Us” took me on an emotional ride. Partly because I have a heart and mine feels a little more than necessary and partly because I have never read a book where I have identified with the main character in such a heartbreaking way.
I have never been in love or even close to it, but I do know what it feels like to watch someone you love treat someone else you love with no respect or decency, for a lack of words.
People often forget how the children feel in these certain situations that occur in the book, but let me just say we don’t feel good and some of us never do.
Something this book taught me, though, is that there is no such thing as bad people, we are all just people who sometimes do bad things.
The best books in life are the ones that make you think about the topics of life you push aside. A book doesn’t have to be deemed a classic to be considered a timeless piece of literature. In 2016, Colleen Hoover published a book that will forever (at least in my opinion) be one of the greatest books of all time. I don’t want anyone to think after reading this that this book is by any means one in a million. But for me this book was soul grasping and that is enough for me to put it on a pedestal next to the greats of Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
This next part is for Colleen Hoover so if you aren’t her, please skip ahead, thanks a bunch! Mrs. Hoover what I am about to say is 100% true. I. AM. IN. LOVE. WITH. YOU. I know you are married, and I respect that, I just thought you should know how I felt. You have made such a difference in my life just by writing this book, but more importantly the character Lily. And for that I am forever grateful.
If you haven’t gotten the chance to read “It Ends with Us,” I highly recommend it. If you end up hating it, don’t kill the messenger.
