I read It Ends With Us in less than three days. I didn’t want to like it, but I did. And that’s the conflict this book leaves you with—how can something so well-written, so compelling, also feel so deeply unsettling?
Colleen Hoover doesn’t just tell a love story; she unravels one. At first, I wanted to love Ryle. He was charming, ambitious, and passionate. But then I hated him. I wanted to shake Lily, to hug her, to beg her to see what so many women struggle to recognize: that love doesn’t excuse abuse, and that abusers don’t often change.
This book wrecked me. I haven’t personally experienced domestic violence, but I know women like Lily. I have watched some leave, and I have watched some stay. And that’s what I may never be able to fully understand—the staying. Hoover doesn’t romanticize Ryle’s actions, but the novel does what real life often does: it makes you question, makes you hope, makes you ache for the person who isn’t what you thought they were.
While It Ends With Us is undeniably powerful, it also toes a line that made me uncomfortable. Is it fair to frame a story of domestic violence within a romance? Does it risk softening the reality of abuse? I don’t know. What I do know is that this book makes you feel everything—love, anger, frustration, devastation—and maybe that’s the point. Hoover gives us a protagonist who has to make an impossible choice, and through her, we are forced to confront the complexities of love, trauma, and survival.
Would I recommend It Ends With Us? Yes, but with caution. It’s not an easy read, nor should it be. But it’s an important one.
Hey Dana Jane 