It Starts With Us will be the last Colleen Hoover book I read. While this book fills in holes that the first book left, I still have to ask: why was this book written in the first place?
It Starts With Us (2022)
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre(s): Adult, Contemporary, Drama, Fiction, Romance
Trigger(s): domestic violence, sexual assault, spousal abuse, spousal rape
Summary
Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil coparenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date.
But her excitement is quickly hampered by the knowledge that, though they are no longer married, Ryle is still very much a part of her life—and Atlas Corrigan is the one man he will hate being in his ex-wife and daughter’s life.
Switching between the perspectives of Lily and Atlas, It Starts with Us picks up right where the epilogue for the “gripping, pulse-pounding” (Sarah Pekkanen, author of Perfect Neighbors) bestselling phenomenon It Ends with Us left off. Revealing more about Atlas’s past and following Lily as she embraces a second chance at true love while navigating a jealous ex-husband, it proves that “no one delivers an emotional read like Colleen Hoover” (Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author).
Taken from Goodreads.com
MY THOUGHTS & REVIEW
My initial impression of this book was that it is mostly fanservice. I get it… People want to know what happened to Lily and Atlas. I assume that most people wanted a story only about Lily and Atlas. Instead, we get the jealous ex-husband who still finds ways to abuse Lily, and the messy lives of the lovebirds, Lily and Atlas.
Hoover Aged The Story
The story is dated: these pop culture references and TikTok mentions aren’t going to make this book age well. These references are cheap grabs to make the characters a bit more relatable.
The Characters
ATLAS
Atlas is a wasted character. I don’t care about how much he thinks about Lily. If he’s necessary to include in the story, then Hoover should have given him more depth. It would have been great if the story included more of his life outside of Lily. We get some of that when he meets his younger half-brother, but if he isn’t doting on Lily and her issues, he’s doting on familial issues. I expected to see more about Atlas the chef and not Atlas, the guy who fixes other people’s problems.
Weirdly enough, Atlas doesn’t come across as his own person. This book makes his personality blend a little too much with Lily’s. I could blame the constant POV switches that are done in every chapter, but it has more to do with Hoover’s lack of interest in making him more than just “the homeless boy who became a hot business owner.” Atlas is a stereotype of a hot guy with a rough life who found his way (because some random underage girl pitied him). He also happens to be madly in love with Lily. That’s all his character offers in this novel and it sucks.
LILY
I’ll admit that Hoover made Lily strong and assertive in the first book. She was confident in her body and in herself. However, Hoover diminished whatever light Lily had by the end of the first book. Her development comes after she faced domestic abuse. Fine. But she still has Ryle in her life despite her fear of him. Why keep him in her life? Why allow him any right to their daughter?
Lily is a walking self-contradiction—she wants to protect herself and her daughter from harm, but she lets this man into their lives. When she stood up for herself in the hospital, it was the only satisfying moment in the duology. But how is it that Hoover took away that renewed strength from Lily in this novel? Hoover gives it back towards the end of the book when she sets boundaries with Ryle, but it’s not much. She did a lot to protect him and his career.
RYLE
Surprisingly, Ryle was the only consistent character of the three. He was unhinged and easily angered.
The Writing
Aside from the grammatical errors and constant POV shifts, the story seemed more disjointed than the last one. The lines Atlas would speak didn’t always sound natural. I should also say that the writing in general had tones of adolescence. In other words, all of the characters sounded way younger than they actually are. Like I previously stated, Atlas didn’t seem like his own character. His personality clashed with Lily’s—they both seemed like the same person.
Also: what’s up with all the letters? I don’t understand why Hoover needs to have a story within the story. It adds nothing to the characters’ development. If anything, it’s filler. Every time I saw italics, I couldn’t help but think that Hoover ran out of ideas for these characters. This wouldn’t be an issue if the letters didn’t take too much space in the story. Writing letters was Lily’s thing, and I excused them as diary entries in the first novel. But they had no place in the second novel. Sure, it’s a cute thing to do between couples, but if Atlas and Lily are expressing their love and gratitude for each other through these letters, why couldn’t they just do it in person? Again, Atlas and Lily were written too similarly to each other.
While I’m on the topic of filler content, I should also point out that the exposition was more prominent. Showing vs Telling is something that Hoover struggles with. We are often given “I feel like” sentences, but we never get true expressions of the characters’ feelings. Their emotions are robotic and unbelievable.
In all, Hoover’s books are not for me.
I give It Starts With Us 1 out of 5 stars: ⭐
This post is an edited version of my original review on Goodreads.com
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