It Ends with Us
[{'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2020', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I bought this because of the reviews. I have not read any of Ms. Hoover’s books, so I didn’t know what to expect. However, 100 pages in and I’m not going to finish. This is a bodice ripper “romance” novel. Not even a well written one, frankly. It’s baffling that books like this still sell in 2020! Nothing empowering. Women swoon over handsome doctors and sleep with them even when they “aren’t that kind of girl” because the doc is handsome and rich so...”let me go pretty myself up so he can have his way” blah, blah. What rubbish! I seriously don’t understand the reviews, but then again I never read any of that “50 Shades”garbage so I guess there is a market, it just isn’t me.\nAnyway, don’t expect great literature with this one. In fact, set expectations really low and maybe you can get through it. Me? Life is too short to waste any of it on crappy books.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2016', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': '“In the future . . . if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again . . . fall in love with me.”\n\nI\'m going to start this review off with this statement: I didn\'t cry while I was reading this book, but I did cry several days later when I was looking back on Lily\'s story. That shows how emotionally charged this story is, along with the true power behind Colleen\'s writing. I\'m not going to give away any spoilers because you need to go into the book blind. If you want to know what happens, there are definitely some reviews out there that tell you the big twists and turns. But take my advice and don\'t spoil this book for yourself. It will lose a lot if you go in knowing exactly what to expect. So seriously, don\'t do it to yourself. Just let the beauty of Colleen\'s writing sweep over you and sink in.\n\n“All humans make mistakes. What determines a person\'s character aren\'t the mistakes we make. It\'s how we take those mistakes and turn them into lessons rather than excuses.”\n\nThis is honestly not only one of the best reads of 2016, but also one of the most (if not the most) empowering. I want to give this book to every man, woman, and even teenager (it\'s definitely a NA/adult read) and tell them... READ THIS NOW! Do you want to know why? Because this book carries with it a very strong message, one that shows strength and courage that many people might not have at the time, but after reading will understand and gain. I honestly don\'t know if there has ever been a time when I was prouder to be reading the heroine\'s story due to her choices. Ultimately though, Colleen Hoover wrote a book that everyone can take something away from. Colleen always writes such unique stories, and this one is certainly no exception. But the one thing I will say is that this is truly her best book yet.\n\n“Just because someone hurts you doesn\'t mean you can simply stop loving them. It\'s not a person\'s actions that hurt the most. It\'s the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”\n\nLily\'s story is one that I never wanted to stop reading. If I know that I\'m going to need to read a book in multiple sittings (which was the case with this book), I usually try to find a good place to stop. One in which, nothing major is happening and nobody is facing some drastic/perilous moment. Well you see the problem with this book is the fact that there is literally NO. GOOD. STOPPING. POINT! None! There was never a part where I felt safe in letting this book sit overnight because I knew that the story and the what if\'s would play endlessly in my mind. So I stayed up and read it all in one sitting because I simply couldn\'t stop. Lily was someone that I connected to right from the get go. I knew as soon as the book started that I would like her, and that never once stopped while I was reading. However, I didn\'t realize how much her character would affect me while I was reading. As I said before, after I was finished reading, I couldn\'t have been prouder of her decisions. The strength she had throughout the story to go through what she did, but also her resolve and conviction just made me constantly cheer her on. Lily is truly one of the most admirable characters that I have ever had the pleasure of reading about, and that admiration goes extraordinarily deep.\n\n“Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn\'t waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.”\n\nI mentioned it briefly above, but this book has a very powerful message, and this message is actually carefully woven into the story from page 1. You obviously don\'t realize it when you start reading the novel, but it\'s there when you look back after finishing. And this is also why I\'m going to reiterate the importance of going into the story blind, because just as unexpected and emotional it is for the reader to read and witness what Lily goes through, it is even more unexpected and emotional for Lily. This is where this book truly shines, because you as a reader feel like part of the story. There\'s a very slow burn while reading, one in which we get to know characters and see the develop in the ways that we as humans get to know each other...but then Colleen rips that metaphorical rug out from under all of us, and shocks us with one revelation after another. But you know what? That\'s exactly how life is sometimes...sometimes you never see things coming in a million years and you have to figure out how to deal with these radical changes you never thought would happen.\n\n“It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.”\n\nWhere this book really got me though was the meaning of the title. Throughout the entire time I was reading, I kept wondering what the title meant. Because come on...this is Colleen Hoover and literally EVERYTHING has some significance (no matter how small). And when I got to the part of the story where the title finally made sense, guys let me tell you...this had an impact on me like no other. I just sat there with my book in my hands staring at the page for a solid 5 minutes. It is the perfect title for the perfect book.\n\n“Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen seconds that we\'ll never get back.”\n\nI connected with this book in my own way, and for that I am extraordinarily thankful to Colleen Hoover for even writing this book. The author\'s note at the end was just as powerful and amazing as the rest of the story, but it shows just how personal this story was for her to write. I applaud Colleen for writing this book and not "making things easy" for the main character or glossing over the "bad parts." This is an incredibly realistic book that makes you realize many things and leaves an imprint on your soul. It\'s important to remember that everyone must make extraordinarily difficult decisions in their life, and not everyone will agree with them. If this book even empowers one woman to take steps in making an important decision, the Colleen Hoover did her job. And I count myself lucky to have had the honor of reading this story because I am a changed person because of it!\n\nHappy reading :)'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on October 17, 2019', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': "This book makes an important issue of spousal abuse seem insignificant. A VERY SHALLOW take on this matter. Don't buy this book. You will see what I mean if you do. Oh, and let's not forget how the main character instantly jumps into another man's arms. Like she has to have a man in her life no matter what. No healing, no therapy, no nothing...she just needs another man as her solution. Disgusting."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2019', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-2 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I cannot tell you how angry this book made me feel. I’m not sure if I’m the only one, but considering all the five star reviews it seems I’m one of a few that flat out didn’t care for this book. I gave it two starts because 1) I still love Colleen and will continue to read her work. 2) I do love the way she writes, her style is still one of my favorites.\nStarting out this book moved way too fast for my liking. The middle got extremely slow. Then the end sped up again to the point where I almost stopped reading it. She stayed in the apartment her husband beat her up and tried to rape her in? And then you let him be a part of the child’s life!? I can’t even with this book. This guy never gets in trouble for his actions, and is free to do what he did to Lily to anyone else. Yes, they loved each other, and the result of that love was heartbreaking. However, I can’t say the end result didn’t make me anything but mad. I loved Atlas, and if the story had started with him, broken off with him leaving and her attending college, and then them accidentally meeting up again at his restaurant…THAT would have been a great storyline. I know this book was personal to Colleen and I give her mad props for sharing pieces of her and her moms life. Partner abuse needs to be talked about more.\nAs I said, I still love Colleen Hoover and the way she creates a story, I just can’t get on board with this one. *All personal opinion*'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2018', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': "The reality of this book has left me speechless. I have been staring at this computer screen for a good hour now trying to find the right words. And that is after I spent a good 6 hours in my couch reading it. This is not the kind of book that can easily be put down to be read later, there are no good spots to stop. Once you start it becomes incredibly difficult to take a break.\n\nThe story is complex. It is raw. It is honest. It is sad. It is painful.\n\nIt shows the reality of human nature. The reality that we are not black and white, simply good or bad. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in the middle- people that make mistakes.\nIt Ends with Us is told through Lilly's eyes. It is told in the present tense but we also get glimpses into her past as she reads journal entries from when she was a teen.\nLilly is brave and strong. But also as vulnerable as any other woman out there. I was rather impressed with her character, with her sense of self and her ability to prioritize. She had many hard choices to make and she made them well. They were hard, very hard... and there will be a small part of you, as there was a small part of her, who will wish different, but you will know that she did the right thing in the end.\nRiley is amazing! I absolutely loved him. And he is the perfect example of how things are not always as they seem. But most importantly, of how often there is so much more to someone's story than we know. Everyone has a past and everyone is -for better or worse- defined by that past. I believe with all my heart that Colleen Hoover chose the right ending for both Lilly and Riley, but I do not believe someone like Riley should be treated with hatred. I felt his pain, specially in the end.\nAtlas was pure perfection. There are so many kids out there in the world like him. How wonderful would it be if there were more Lillys?!\n\nAll in all this was a fantastic read. Super emotional. Heart wrenching.\n\nWhen the book was over though something did not feel right. The last 3-4 pages felt rushed. Lilly 'jumped ship' too fast.\n\nAnd all that being said, I feel I should mention something I did not see mentioned anywhere and I was certainly not told myself: if you have been in a abusive situation (parents/partners/other) and still have hard days, don't read unless you are having a good day. I will be honest and say that had I know what the book was about before reading it I would not have read it. I felt in the end of this book similarly to how I felt when I finished reading The Problem with Forever two months ago (another book I started without knowing what it was going to be about)- reliving memories better forgotten. It was far to real, and if you, like me, can relate to the main female character in either of those books, you also know you need to be in the right frame of mind while reading it..."}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I blindly bought this book from a tik tok and it was the worst $10.20 I have ever spent. The diary entries to Ellen DeGeneres throughout the book were so weird...I don’t know why it was even added. “Dear Diary” would’ve been 100 times better. The plot is straight from Wattpad and the writing style is the same. I read the book in a day just to read through 360 pages of complete soft sex fan fiction trash and get a terrible ending. There’s no resolve at all. DO NOT BUY.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on September 28, 2016', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': '*Spoiler-free review*\n\nI have a confession to make here, folks:\n\nI dismissed Colleen Hoover years ago and I haven\'t read anything from her since.\n\nIt\'s true. Three or four years ago I went through a string of so-so to bad Colleen Hoover books, and I decided to just put her out of my mind. I ignored her new releases, and I lumped her into my mental pile for authors who are "not for me."\n\nRecently, one of my friends wanted to buddy read this book. I thought, "Gah, pay full price for a book I\'m not going to like?" However, I sucked it up and sort of grumbled about it, but I decided to give it a go.\n\nAnd this book blew me away.\n\nThe Colleen Hoover I last read wasn\'t writing books at this caliber. This was a whole different level.\n\nFor one, there are none, and I mean NONE, of the tired romance tropes presents in this book. In fact, this book was a little more woman\'s fiction than romance, if I\'m being honest. While I guess it can still be classified, genre-rules-style, as romance, it is more about Lily\'s life experiences and the lessons that she learns about herself than anything else. There is a romance present, but I don\'t think it is the main focus of the story. While I\'m not typically a women\'s fiction fan, I think that if this book took any other trajectory, it wouldn\'t have been as powerful.\n\nI typically don\'t read reviews before starting a book. In fact, I didn\'t even read the blurb for this one, or if I did, I forgot it before starting to read. I liked that. I think going in blind with an open mind and minimal expectations is the way to go. Though the twists and turns aren\'t 100% unexpected, the author very much succeeded in pulling the rug out from under me on more than one occasion.\n\nI\'m usually not a fan of books where people say, "Wow, that made me think. This book is a thinker." I usually just roll my eyes internally because I assumed that the readers are being played like emotional pawns. I know, I\'m judgy. But in this case, yeah, I was thinking a whole hell of a lot. It made me reevaluate how I perceive others and their relationships, and it made me rethink my biases. People are always know-it-alls until they are in the situation themselves, and then it doesn\'t seem quite as simple.\n\nThe author made one right decision after another with this story. I think that is the key to its success. The author made a relatable, human character in Lily, and gave each supporting character their positives and negatives. There are no villains here. No easy answers. Colleen Hoover also made an insanely smart decision to have only Lily narrate the story. There was no other choice, really, but it gave readers a laser-focus on her, which is where our focus deserves to be.\n\nWhile this book has a positive ending, it is also a story that can be described as gritty, difficult, hopeful, powerful, and crushing, all at the same time. It is a long story, but it has a fast-pace with plot elements thrown in at the right times to keep interest engaged. I couldn\'t put the book down from the moment I got into the groove, and I read this story all night until the last page. The dedication is also important to read, but make sure you do it after you\'ve finished the story and not before.\n\nColleen Hoover impressed me so much with this story. It made me rethink a lot of things, but most of all, it made me rethink how I judged Colleen Hoover years ago. I won\'t dismiss her so easily again.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-5 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I truly enjoyed this book with such a powerful story and a sad reality for some of us.\nIt’s easy to judge people when you have never experienced what they are going through.\nWe judge parents when they can’t control their children in public until we become parents then we now why it can be hard at times.\nWe judge a person when they don’t leave their abusive partner when it’s obvious they are hurting them. Why would you stay with someone who hurts you physically or emotionally?. It’s not until we go through it that it clicks.\n\nMy dad was a working alcoholic. He would work Monday through Friday and every Friday night he would go out get drunk and come home to let my mom and his 5 children know what a bunch of disappointments we were to him. When were little he would mostly aim the psychological abuse at my mom. Then when we were in our preteens he started emotionally abusing us. He would yell throw things around and release all the rage he had to us verbally. We asked my mom to leave him many times but she didn’t.\n\nI swore I would never let a person do that to me and swore I would never be like my mother. At 18 I move in with a boyfriend and left him after enduring 2 years of physical abusive with him. I had become what I feared the most my mother only difference was my dad never hit my mom. I was beaten by the man I loved.\n\nIt never gets better. It only gets worse.\n\nI didn’t have a anybody to help me. One day I just woke up and realized that I couldn’t do it anymore and left. Did I looked back absolutely but I was lucky that I realized that he would never change and I loved me too much.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'I heard about this book allllll over the internet and was SO disappointed. Don’t expect a literary masterpiece. This book is so shallow, and I physically cringed and made a face while reading it. My boyfriend asked what was wrong with me haha!\nTW: Don’t even get me started on the romanticizing of domestic abuse. In this book, abuse is excused because of a ~rough past~ and she continues to take him back because of how misunderstood he must be. Where is the strong woman role at all??! Maybe some will like this but this book was so terrible that I won’t even be passing it along to friends.'}, {'review_meta': 'Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2021', 'review_star': 'a-icon a-icon-star a-star-1 review-rating', 'review_body': 'What I dislike most about this novel is that with all the amazing authors and stories out there, this drivel is considered a New York Times best seller and the book is getting so much promotion. This is the third time I have taken a TikTok recommendation for a best seller, and all three times the books were just nonsense and not worthy of the money and praise they are getting. There may be some spoilers ahead, so continue with caution. This book is so cliche, the characters are undeveloped, and I felt embarrassed having to read it. I finished it so that I could write an honest review, but it was torture trying to finish this book. I even took a break from it to read another book, and having come back to it from another book, I realized just how terribly written it is! The main character is your typical, "she is so pretty she doesn\'t know it." Two men fall madly in love with her, and she is great at everything she does, including playing poker and bonding with strange men. Everything just somehow works out perfectly for all three characters to their looks, careers, and successes. The "Naked Truths" were cute in the first couple of chapters, but if you and your partner can only be honest with each other after saying, "Naked Truths?" then that is a red flag for a toxic relationship. There is no character development, except if you count that the whole first part of the book, the character is one way, and then on page 303 suddenly becomes this strong willed character who is finally making sense and contradicts what she said earlier in the novel. Hoover and another reviewer said that it was hard to read about Ryle\'s temper because they loved his personality in the beginning; what personality?! He is not ambitious; he is pompous. There\'s not much to him except the typical white handsome rich guy who begs for sex. There were lame excuses throughout the novel to explain things away, such as Ryle makes a trusting father because some abusive men are only abusive toward their spouses, or Lily got pregnant because she skipped a couple of her birth control pills. I know that is possible, but why even throw that in there? Oddly enough, I enjoyed the ending. I thought that it had a good theme, but I prefer books where the theme is intertwined throughout the novel and isn\'t just dumped on the reader in the last couple of pages. The epilogue, however, ruined the only saving grace of this novel and made sure to end up like a badly written Hallmark movie. Somehow everything gets tied up in a nice little bow for everyone including Ryle. In the Author\'s note, Hoover explains that she is writing from experience. It just goes to show that you can have a good story to tell and not the ability to actually write. Not only is this not a good story or book, but the author just can\'t write. She writes about as well as some of my struggling 8th graders. I had already knew that this book was about abuse, so I went into it thinking it was going to tackle a mature subject matter, but this book is neither mature or even dark. The author says that she wrote it so that people can understand why a woman would stay with an abuser, but this book did not do that for me. I will admit that I am a person who does not understand how a woman gets involved with an abuser or chooses to stay, and rather than coming away from this book with more understanding of that situation, I came away with the thought that the author took a serious subject matter and profited off it without doing any serious work. This is not a cheesy romance novel, this is worse. As one reviewer said, if you take your books seriously, skip this crap. I can only think that the reason this book is getting so much praise is because of a good publisher and teenagers and middle aged women who either never had good sex or have a misunderstanding of love and sex. The dialogue is cringy and the book is predictable. Hoover, you just can\'t write or tell a story.'}]