The Many Faces of Dysfunctional Love

Like the masochistic bitch I am I ran straight to my local bookstore the moment I heard about Colleen Hoover's It ends with us. Although the book got published in 2016, it somehow has a bit of a revival going on with the help of Tiktok and its never-ending edits of sad music and quotes from the story. 

"Fifteen seconds. That's all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen seconds that we'll never get back"

And, yea, the quotes are catchy - so I bought it.

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The story unfolds as follows: Lily Bloom has a strange but pleasant encounter with a man up a rooftop after her father's funeral. As attractive strangers do, they flirt and give each other "naked truths" about themselves. Handsome has to leave before things can escalate but this night gave Lily the courage to pursue her dream of an own flower shop. Six months later a random woman named Allysa walks into her new business and starts working there. As fate happens, Allysa is the sister of the attractive guy from the rooftop named Ryle.

Is it a bit cliché? Absolutely. Personally, that is something I always am prepared going into a romance story. The good thing is Hoover has a captivating writing style that makes these rather uneventful first 40 pages fly by.

After some back and forth, Lily and Ryle start dating. She gets even closer to her new friend Allysa and her flower business is flourishing. Life could not be better, even though Lily's ex-boyfriend and first love Atlas enters the stage. The reader gets clued in into their past relationship bit by bit through diary entries Lily wrote back then that are all dedicated to Ellen Degeneres. This way we also get a closer look at Lily's homelife - from which we already know that it was anything but pleasant with her father being physically and sexually abusive towards her mother. We know that Lily has a history when it comes to abuse in her life which makes it all the more crushing when perfect Ryle pushes Lily in his anger and she hits her head.

The book is split into two parts. The first part ends with the last diary entry covering her and Atlas' relationship and Lily's reassured commitment to a life with Ryle in spite of his outbreak earlier. It is a tough read. Although Lily always speaks openly about the mistreatment of her mother at the hands of her father in the diary, the last entry really goes into detail. I almost cried at this fictional yet-for too many all-to-familiar scene that was playing out on the pages. On the other hand, Lily and Ryle have great chemistry together. They are happy and in love. They could make it work. I want them to make it work. Still, my stomach told me otherwise as I dived into part two.

Lily and Ryle are happy but the next incident is right around the corner. Because Lily carries Atlas's phone number in her case (which he put there in case she ever needed his help to get out of a dangerous situation with Ryle), Ryle loses his temper again. As he tries to leave she follows him and gets pushed down the stairs. Or falls down. Depends on who you ask. Lily is devastated and makes him leave, not falling for his apologies and love declarations. She leaves. 

Until Allysa arranges a meeting between her and Ryle to clear some stuff up. Turns out Ryle has his own childhood trauma he suffers from which causes him to get so angry to a point where he doesn't even fully remember what happens. Considering this new revelation Lily is determined to make their relationship work. Ryle is not a bad person, he is not her father, and she is not her mother for staying with him and believing in their love. 

And they make it work. Ryle learns to walk away and calm down enough to talk things through and Lily knows better than to follow him and instead gives Ryle space. It works. They are happy, in love, and get married. Everything is great - until Ryle's next breakout. Angered by a souvenir from Atlas Lily still keeps, he becomes almost feral and tries to rape her. He knocks her out in the process which leads to him coming back from his clouded mind and apologizing but Lily knows what to do.

Hoover transforms the mundane into a fairytale-like life for Lily and Ryle which makes the fall all that harder. It is important to show just how happy these two are together in order to understand what Lily would leave behind if she ever left for good. It emphasizes how these outbursts are the exception and not the norm and Lily and the reader has to ask the question: at what point isn't it worth it anymore? The assault is terrible to read with Lily begging the man she loves to not hurt her. It doesn't help that we as readers have fallen just as hard for Ryle as Lily and know that he would do anything for her as he has proven countless times over the course of the book. But then again, how can you do something like that to someone you love?

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The book has roughly 100 pages left for the aftermath. And while it is an interesting question whether Lily stays with Ryle or doesn't, the point is to understand how she could even get into this situation. A big emotional force of this book was the relationship between Lily and her mother (which could have taken up even more space in my opinion but surely does deliver) and their now paralleled situation. As Lily wrote in her diary, she cannot understand how her mother can endure the abuse by her father or why she doesn't leave. It is easy to judge from a distance. Hoover wrote in her note from the author that she wrote this personal story for people like her mother who aren't understood and women like her who don't understand. It ends with us, however, makes its audience understand pretty well.

"Because no matter how many good moments she might share with Ryle throughout her lifetime, I know from experience that it would only be the worst ones that stuck with her"

Unfortunately, my upbringing has more in common with Lilys and Hoovers than I would like. Just like Lily, I told myself I will never end up in a situation similar to my mother's. And just like Lily, I learned through her journey that love is sometimes not enough and the answers are never easy to find. It also gave me a lot more respect for women in these awful situations. 

It ends with us is a heartwrenching but honest look at love and abuse that was long overdue in my life and I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who is looking for such.