If you spend any bit of your free time reading, there is a very good chance you have ended up on BookTok too. Within the past year It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover absolutely blew up, it seemed like everyone was reading it. I didn’t have the chance to pick it up until recently and I had extremely high expectations – and, oh boy, did it exceed them. I couldn’t put the book down and ended up reading it in its entirety in a single sitting.
I had very little knowledge of the story itself before reading. Based on the descriptions, I was under the impression that it was a typical romance story, with the drama of a love triangle. While the main character does have two love interests and there is the cliche scene of “If you touch her again I’ll kill you,” the story is so much more. In fact, I would even consider the true romance of the story to be the main character’s search for inner strength.
One aspect of the book I truly didn’t expect was how proponent abuse would be in telling the story. There are multiple instances of domestic physical and sexual abuse, which are told in full detail. Bits of it were even difficult to get through, I spent many pages sobbing and had to step away for a few moments. For people who may be triggered by this topic, I would sit this book out. That being said, I also laughed and happily cried. Colleen Hoover has a beautiful style of writing. She seamlessly jumps from past to present in a single page, never once as a reader did I feel lost. She writes about intense and heavy issues in an honestly raw but not overwhelming way. Most importantly, her words are captivating and you never want the story to end. I was excited to find out that Justin Baldoni, star of Jane the Virgin, is producing a movie adaptation of the story – details of this have yet to be announced. On top of that, Colleen Hoover will be releasing a sequel in October of this year, titled It Starts With Us. For now, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from the story, “You’re only human. And as humans, we can’t expect to shoulder all of our pain.”