It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover - Book Review

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Trigger warnings for domestic violence and abuse.

This book was SO much more than I anticipated.

It Ends With Us was a typical ‘Instagram made me buy it’ book. I’d vaguely seen people talking about it for years, but never quite felt the urgency to pick it up until very recently, when it seemed to have a resurgence in popularity. I bought myself a copy under the assumption that it was something to do with domestic violence, and that there would be a bit of a romance, and, well, that’s it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

This book had me leafing through the pages at 1am, speeding towards the end as I NEEDED to know how everything would conclude before I fell asleep. The twists and turns in the story kept me guessing until the very end, although I had a hunch about what was going to happen.

One of the biggest strengths of this book is that Hoover does a fantastic job of conveying the complexities of abusive relationships. It’s easy to look at a victim of intimate partner violence and blame them for not leaving their abuser as soon as they possibly could. Colleen explains through her characters the many manipulative ways that abusers can keep their partners close; they convince them that they will change, that they’ll never do it again, or even that they can’t live without them.

When you’re a victim of domestic violence, it can be easy to convince yourself that you’d never let that situation happen to you. That at the first sniff of danger, you’d leave. However, many victims of childhood abuse find themselves in abusive relationships later on in life, and something I loved is that Hoover demonstrates this cycle of abuse through the relationships in the book. Most importantly, the book explicitly explains how the characters end the cycle for themselves, hence the title ‘It Ends With Us’, which really resonates with me now that I’ve finished reading.

Colleen also does a great job at portraying the perpetrators of domestic violence in a rounded way. While nothing can excuse their behaviour, abusers do often have their own struggles and past experiences in life that have led them to act violently. It’s important for us to consider why abusers do what they do, without condoning it, in order to break the cycle in our real lives.

Despite the serious subject matter, It Ends With Us manages to retain a surprising amount of whimsy within the story. The flower shop that Lily sets up is so much fun, her friendship with Allysia is multifaceted and interesting, and the love interests have an alluring quality. This seems to make the overall meaning of the story more impactful, as it completely caught me off guard. It would be interesting to give the whole thing a reread now that I know where the plot is going, as I’m sure I’d spot the red flags a lot easier with hindsight.

It’s easy to tell from reading this book that it was the author’s passion project. Domestic violence is something that she knows about intimately, and felt compelled to write and launch out into the world. Colleen addresses her own lived experience at the end of the book, and I commend her for standing up and speaking out about such an important topic.

If you’ve been thinking about picking this book up for a while, then this is your sign to buy a copy and get reading. I don’t often blanket recommend books to people but I truly believe that everyone should read this, if they’re in right headspace to do so. There’s a high chance that some people could find it very triggering, so tread carefully, and be prepared before you dive in if this is a sensitive topic for you.