It Ends With Us 5⭐️/5
It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
5⭐️/5
** spoiler alert: Do not keep reading if you don’t want spoilers for It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover**
As a reader, I value a lot of things: captivating characters (likable or not), heartbreaking narratives, humor, diversity of thought, challenging ideas, momentum and movement of story, but what I find to be a rare and valuable thing is surprise. To alter the direction of a story, to interrupt what you imagined to be the through line of the characters with whom you’ve come to love, trust, and want to spend more time.
Colleen Hoover, not only managed to tackle the impossibly difficult subject matter of domestic abuse, she also managed to tell a remarkable story that thwarts expectations and surprises the reader with where she takes these characters. What’s also surprising (and the reason I can’t stop thinking about this book) are the questions she asks around domestic abuse - she dedicates hundreds of pages to the complexity of these relationships in response to the often simplified, stereotypical question, “why didn’t she just leave?”
There are of course, many obstacles the author has to remove in order to examine the emotional turmoil of the characters rather than the socioeconomic factors that more often play a role in domestic abuse and the “choice” (or lack of choice) many women face. It is acknowledged at times when Lily reflects on her mother’s situation with her abusive father, how she isn’t able to leave for more complicated reasons than just loving him or not. However, I think it’s worth noting that Lily being a business-owner, financial independence from her abuser, and have affluent friends and people to call when she was in danger, all contributed to her success and safety.
I don’t think I’ll write a plot summary here, but I found the short synopsis on the back of the book to be sufficiently informative and captured my interest enough to start reading.
It’s also worth reading the Note from the Author after the epilogue, where Colleen Hoover details her experience with the subject matter and how it shaped the creation of the story. I found it to be brave, bold, and deeply moving.