Rapid Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

My opinions about Colleen Hoover’s writing style haven’t changed: she writes well, but the things she chooses to write about aren’t executed well.

SUMMARY:

Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.
Lily 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. So 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.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan — her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

Summary taken from Goodreads.com

Pretty words do not excuse choppy storytelling.

The Story:

The events in this book are snappy——things happen very quickly, and Hoover gives us little to no time to process what just transpired.

I should also say that this story is plot-driven and not character driven. The dialogue isn’t natural or thoughtful. My impression of the dialogue is that it’s there to force an impression of the characters’ strengths that don’t actually appear in the narrative. In other words, characters are often given lines that try too hard to make the character sound smarter than they are or more superior to another character. Oftentimes, these lines didn’t seem natural, and they wouldn’t fit the characters’ age. I think that this was most prominent in the letters to Ellen DeGeneres that the main character, Lily, would write during her teenage years. For example:

“‘Every month I would get an unmarked package of seeds in the mail with instructions on how to plant them and care for them. I wouldn’t know what I was growing until it came up out of the ground. Every day after school I’d run straight to the backyard to see the progress. It gave me something to look forward to. Growing things felt like a reward.’”

Lily to Atlas
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Lily as the narrator and protagonist:
The characters in this book are bland. There’s room for development, but Hoover doesn’t touch on those things. Lily’s character seemingly moves on from her morbid attachment to her abuser, but the epilogue suggests that he will still play a large role in her life. She doesn’t want to be like her mother, but she chooses to invite him into her life. Lily self-contradicts herself. Again, the dialogue doesn’t match the characters’ actions, and it’s disappointing that this is the extent of Lily’s character.

Depression, or whatever Hoover wrote:
The savior complex is tiring to read in Hoover’s stories. Atlas confesses what he was doing in that abandoned house and then said that Lily saved him. Hoover likes to play with clichés, so the savior characterization doesn’t surprise me. It does surprise me, though, that this is how this author tackled Atlas’ depression. I am aware that Hoover expands on Atlas in the sequel, but I still don’t find it necessary to imply that Lily somehow cured his depression with her pity.

In all, I think this book was okay. It’s an abuse-survivor story. Whoever was in charge of the marketing should re-evaluate how this story is summarized. This was never a romance novel—not really.

I should also add that I read Hoover’s “author note” and it surprised me that she lived in an abusive household. I know that she took events in her life to write in this book, but I have to ask: Why didn’t she just write a memoir?

There’s no reason to dramatize and romanticize her past with bland characters. I guess we’ll never know.

In all, I think that Hoover’s novel had a lot of potential. My biggest issue with it is that it’s advertised as a romance novel when the romance is barely present. The book reads like a slow-paced survivor’s story with pretty events sprinkled here and there. The fact that many fans consider this book a romance novel is a frightening thing.

This post is an edited version of my original review on Goodreads.com