Book Review: "It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover

I am not normally someone who will read a romance novel and enjoy it. With this coming under that umbrella term as an anti-romance novel, it immediately made me interested in whether I could read it and get really stuck in. However, the only romance novel I have ever enjoyed to the point that I read it a second time was Hannah Rothschild’s “The Impossibility of Love” as it was just beautifully written. With “It Ends With Us” I think there was the potential for it to do brilliantly with the concept it had. But, in a lot of places, it let me down through the almost fantasist language to do with the modern day relationship. I was initially very much on the fence about this book and went back and forth changing my mind how I felt about it. I think I have decided upon half marks now, but this does not mean that you should not read it. I would actually say that you read it for yourself and see whether you agree or disagree with my views. It may be a completely different experience for you.

The book starts off with a character named Lily who has recently come back from her father’s funeral where she practically ruined the eulogy. She goes to the nearest rooftop to clear her head and stands on the edge wondering what it would be like to be suicidal. To be honest, this is where I thought that I was on the fence concerning the book and honestly, this is basically the first chapter - or the first half of the first chapter rather. I don’t really think that this would happen in reality and in terms of making this book a modernist romantic nightmare, I think it starts off a little cliché, moving on from one to the next when Ryle enters the picture. A man who comes out with anger, knocking a chair around and showing he is the abusive dominant male archetype of basically everything ever. Let us just say that the opening three chapters were not really to my taste at all.

However, when the character Atlas enters the picture, things become a lot more interesting, they become darker and things move away from the romance and towards the more psychological side of the story. I think that the way in which Ryle and Atlas are kind of juxtaposed made for a great concept and though the mid-section of the book was a lot better than the first or the second half, it was the concept surrounding the characters which made the whole thing come together more.

As much as I did not enjoy the almost cheesy writing style of the first few chapters of the book, I did enjoy how it got progressively darker. Therefore, I appreciate the cheesiness of the beginning of the book showing this sense of false optimism. This is mainly because without that at the beginning, the book would not have the progression into darkness that it did and the psychological meltdown of the structure would be completely ruined. It is well thought through even though it is not particularly my taste in literature.

In conclusion, I think that though this was not to my liking, there are a lot of things to appreciate about this book in terms of character, style, substance and concept. So I think you should definitely give it a read because you may enjoy it a lot more than I have, especially if you want a romance novel which is not really a romance novel but is, if you think about it.