Book Review: It Ends With Us
Trigger(Abuse) Warning! Spoiler Alert!
It Ends With Us is a romance novel written by Colleen Hoover. In the beginning, I hated the story. Lily is a young, beautiful woman driven by her heart. Coming from a small town and having had an incredibly hard life, Lily shows exceptional courage in setting up her own flower shop. Ryle comes in as the classic, emotionally unavailable and non-committal guy. I found no real spark between Lily and Ryle. The chemistry didn’t appeal to me. As the story progressed, it kept drawing me in. Enter Atlas who is Lilly's former lover and everything she deserves. As he makes his way into the story, you can feel the tension in Lily. She starts feeling split between Ryle and Atlas.
Being an insecure person, Ryle finds out that Lilly lied about meeting with Atlas and having his contact details. This is where things start escalating quickly. While Ryle has every right to confront Lily, seeing her being split between Atlas and him because they are in a serious relationship, Ryle gets physically abusive with Lily. His episodes of rage stem from a traumatic incident in his childhood where he accidentally shot his brother, leading to death. It does not excuse him from what he did to Lily but I was able to understand Lily’s reasoning of wanting to give him a second chance. When we talk about tolerating abuse from a stranger, it is very different from being abused by someone we deeply love. Colleen adds layers of love and abuse with great maturity while keeping it as real as possible.
Now the second chance Lily gave resulted in Ryle forcing himself on her. At this point, I was done with Ryle. Lily stopped living with Ryle. It became a point of no return for Lily and to make things worse, she found out about her pregnancy. Meanwhile, Atlas becomes the person Lily finds comfort in after the traumatic incidents she went through with Ryle. Atlas is there for her and he absolutely treats her in the best way possible.
After having the baby, Lily decided in the hospital that she wasn't going back to Ryle and instead spent her life with Atlas. Atlas was hands down the character I resonated with the most. He is everything you want in a partner.
I really did wonder if I would have given someone I loved a second chance if they abused me with the context, and I am absolutely with Lily on this. Lily doesn’t forgive Ryle but she lets him be her daughter’s father. That is a huge grey area. Objectively, it is imperative to stand up against abuse. But when it is from someone you love, it shatters you and that is shown through this story with incredible dignity. One of the reasons I took the longest time to read this book was the way I could feel Lily’s pulse in the writing. You can feel the heartache, the confusion, the chaos and the collapse in how you see yourself. As much as we like to police people on not tolerating abuse of any nature, we have to realise that not everyone has the resources to do so. Not everyone has an environment conducive to that. There are people in this world who have to make hard, soul-crushing choices because they want what is best for their children. People are stuck in complicated situations and we have no right to say that these women made bad choices. It takes incredible strength to tolerate abuse from a family member for the future of your child. What we should instead be talking about is how we build spaces and ecosystems so that people who go through abuse of any sort don’t have to.
It takes courage to throw light on the plight of women who have to tolerate abuse and Colleen manages to pull that off with finesse and grace. This story will always have a special place in my heart. For what Colleen manages to do with this story and for picking an angle that is constantly looked down on by society, I am rating this book 5 out of 5. This book is meant only for adult readers.