Book Review: “It Ends With Us”

August 2, 2016 was the date of publication for the now #1 New York Times bestseller, “It Ends with Us”. But if I’m being honest, after reading about half of the story, I don’t really understand the hype.

This novel follows the story of a girl named Lily Bloom who meets a handsome neurosurgeon by the name of Ryle Kincaid and falls in love with him. Lily had just attended her father’s funeral and was taking a breath of fresh air on top of a building, when she heard a man damaging a chair in frustration which, in fact, was Ryle. 

Ryle immediately sets his eyes on her and starts smoking weed. They start talking about life together and Lily tells him about her plan to open a flower shop. Their conversation gets serious with the intense physical desirability between the two. But I didn’t really understand why Lily felt this extreme attraction to Ryle when they had literally just met. It just made their relationship seem hurried.

He also gives her a lot of red flags in this first meeting where he says that he is too “selfish to be in a relationship” or even “have kids”. Instead of taking notice of that, Lily is hypnotized by his physical attraction and mysterious aura. 

Even later in the story, when Lily talks to Ryle’s sister about them dating, she feels pity for Lily, not happiness. I can’t help but feel that Lily should have put the pieces together about Ryle and is pretty clueless for not doing so. 

Speaking of Ryle, he is the character that I hated most in this story because of the stereotype Hoover uses with him. He is this extremely rich, handsome, charming and suave and seemingly has no flaws, which immediately made me suspicious of him. He seemed very demanding of Lily and forced himself on to her as the story went on as well.

Seeing this much about a character pretty early on in the story left me feeling like there was nothing else I would get out of reading the final chapters, which made me stop reading.

However, despite what I think are Hoover’s many flaws with this book, I do think that the book has some positives, one being with the character, Atlas. 

Back when Lily was young, her father used to abuse her mother and there would be fighting all of the time in their household. Atlas was an 18-year-old homeless boy in her school who lived next door to her. She starts taking care of him and they develop a relationship with each other.

Unlike Ryle, however, Atlas forms a relationship with Lily on the basis of friendship. He supports her with her parents fighting all of the time and she helps him when she can. Eventually Atlas moves away to his uncle’s house but she reconnects with him in the present day storyline.

Overall, I found this book to be predictable and uninteresting because of the highly overused stereotypes and the unhealthy relationship between Ryle and Lily which made it tremendously hard to want to read it.