It Ends with Us (It Ends with Us #1) by Colleen Hoover Book Review

Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Publisher: Atria Books
Release Date: August 2, 2016
Pages: 376

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.

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My Thoughts

Lily has done everything she can to escape her past. You don't get a love triangle but you see her first and past love, Atlas, in a few flashbacks. 

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.

Sparks fly when she meets Ryle one night on the top of a roof. The chemistry between them is undeniable but what happens when reality hits the two?

He pulls back to look down at me and when he sees my tears, he brings his hands up to my cheeks. “In the future... if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again... fall in love with me.”

Lily has choices to make. Hard choices. And she doesn't want to repeat history so the next steps she takes will decide her future forever.

Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen.

Star review: ★★★★★ (5) ♡

I don't want to say too much because it would spoil the book. What made it special was the things discussed in the book that are so important and not like some other regular romance novels that I have read.

The characters. I liked Lily for standing up for herself and her relationship with Allysa. They were so cool together and Allysa's relationship with Marshall was what I wanted for her and Ryle. Meeting Ryle was cute in the beginning but that's it. And even though Ryle has childhood trauma, it still doesn't justify what he did to Lily. It made me feel sorry for him but that's different from forgiveness. 

Overall, It Ends With Us left me in tears in less than 24 hours. I may or may not have stayed up until 12 just so I could start it... The message she got across to the readers was so important (even though it broke my heart reading about them). I'm definitely reading other books by her!

About the Author

Colleen Hoover is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Slammed, Hopeless, Maybe Someday, Maybe Not, Ugly Love, Confess, November 9, It Ends with Us, Without Merit, and All Your Perfects. She has won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance three years in a row—for Confess (2015), It Ends with Us (2016), and Without Merit (2017). Confess was adapted into a seven-episode online series. In 2015, Colleen and her family founded The Bookworm Box, a bookstore and monthly subscription service offering signed novels donated by authors. All profits are given to various charities each month to help those in need. Colleen lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys. Visit ColleenHoover.com.