It Ends With Us, by Colleen Hoover

This book is a massive bestseller and I’ve been seeing it all over the place. It’s essentially a romance — but the kind of romance novel that hits the mainstream shelves rather than being relegated to the category romance section of the bookstore. In that sense it’s in a similar category to Emily Henry’s Book Lovers which I enjoyed so much earlier this year, but it did not have the same appeal for me at all.

At the heart of It Ends With Us, is a love triangle: Lily, a young woman whose personality left so little impact on me that I’m finding it hard to sum her up briefly, meets Ryle, a rich, handsome jerk who walks right off the pages of formula romance. Lily falls hard for Ryle even as he insists he doesn’t want a relationship, but at the same time she’s haunted by memories of her first love Atlas. When Atlas (yes, his name is Atlas) reappears in her life, she finds herself torn.

I’ll admit this summary doesn’t really do the book justice, because there’s something much more important than a love triangle going on here: there’s a very raw and real-feeling exploration of intimate partner violence and why the answer to “why doesn’t she just leave” is never as easy as it looks. That part of the novel was very well done and I respected how Colleen Hoover made that situation nuanced, complicated, and believable.

However, both the actual romances at the heart of the story felt unbelievable to me, and Lily was a bit of a black hole at the centre of her own story in terms of being a memorable character, so the love story plot felt kind of flat. I can see why this book has been a big bestseller but it didn’t make me want to read another Colleen Hoover book, not even the sequel to this one (confusingly titled It Starts With Us).