It Ends with us

“’Do you always say exactly what’s on your mind?’ He shrugs. ‘Not to most people.’”

It Ends With Us

2/10

A preposterous, cringe, and laughable effort that undermines a powerful message with poor writing, unconvincing characters, and ludicrous contrivances.

Though this is a popular novel, I don’t see the appeal. It is the story of a 23-year-old called Lily Bloom who, after her father’s funeral, randomly meets a rich, sexy neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid. He is smoking pot and punching chairs at the time. She had a difficult relationship with her father because he was violent towards her mother and couldn’t say anything nice about him in her eulogy. Despite the initial red flags of being violent towards furniture, only wanting a one-night stand with Lily, and explicitly saying that he’s “too selfish to have children”, they get into a relationship.

It encounters problems when Ryle loses his temper towards Lily, after burning his hand, and assaults her. She says that she will leave him if he ever strikes her again. The situation is complicated when Lily’s old flame from when she was a teenager, a homeless boy with the hyper-unrealistic name of ‘Atlas’, makes an appearance as the owner of a high-profile restaurant they repeatedly visit. A love triangle starts to emerge as Atlas has concerns that Lily is being abused by Ryle. Lily and Ryle choose the worst possible solution to their issues by getting married in Las Vegas. The marriage hits the rocks pretty quickly when Ryle finds that Lily was concealing Atlas’ phone number, which he covertly gave her. He breaks her phone and assaults her a second time, pushing her down the stairs. He apologises, sleeps outside the door of the apartment, and Lily forgives him.

Soon after, they have another blazing row. Ryle wants to take a job at another hospital and move away from Boston. During the row, he knocks over a vase of flowers, but they reconcile, and Ryle buys a new apartment without consulting Lily. A few red flags here, but okay. When moving into their new apartment, drunk Ryle discovers that one of Lily’s fridge magnets was a gift from Atlas and reads all her historic diaries detailing their teenage relationship. It informs him that one of Lily’s tattoos is a sentimental reminder of where Atlas used to kiss her. He assaults her for a third time, headbutting and even biting her. Afterwards, Lily makes the terrible decision, in my view, of directly contacting Atlas, whose phone number she had memorised.

Atlas takes Lily to the hospital where, in a questionable medical consultation, the doctor tells her she is pregnant with Ryle’s child. She stays with Atlas while recovering from her injuries and deciding how she will proceed in her complex situation. During this time, Atlas is making it very clear that he remains romantically interested in Lily. As Ryle is seconded to England for three months, Lily is unable to tell him in person that she is pregnant. She gets some advice on what to do from the limited cast of characters and decides to terminate her relationship with Ryle, asking for a divorce. After a respectable gap, she bumps into Atlas again on the street, and it is strongly implied that they resume their relationship.

The title ‘It Ends With Us’ infers that the daughters of women who are abused are also likely to get into relationships with men who abuse them. I can’t comment on the credibility of this conceit, but it doesn’t feel accurate to me. Towards the close of the novel Lily speaks to her newly born daughter about breaking this supposed cycle. “My mother went through it. I went through it. I’ll be damned if I allow my daughter to go through it. I kiss her on the forehead and make her a promise. ‘It stops here. With me and you. It ends with us.’”

One of the major issues with this text is that it is peppered with utterly ridiculous and laughable scenarios. For instance, when Lily is first moving into the premises for a florist store she is opening, a random character called Allysa makes an appearance. Not only does Allysa offer to work for Lily for free, “I do get bored sometimes”, but very conveniently just so happens to be Ryle’s sister. I know, crazy right? In a city the size of Boston.

In a flashback scene, homeless Atlas gives Lily a wooden heart that he carved. How did he do it? “…with an old whittling knife I found at the [derelict] house [he was squatting in].” So stoopid.

Allysa and her husband have a baby and name it after Ryle, the woman beater. They call it Rylee. What a cringe name.

Among the most improbable aspects of the text is that both Lily and Ryle seem to be on the phone to their mothers every dang day. “’She calls me every day… You think I’m kidding?’… He presses a few keys and then begins to play the voice mail. ‘Hey, sweetheart! It’s your mom. Haven’t spoken to you since yesterday.’”

Sadly, there is little in the way of intentional comedy in the book.

When Lily sprains her ankle and is unable to work, Allysa offers to step in while she rests. “Allysa, I’m declaring you employee of the month.” Hysterical. She’s the only employee.

When Atlas is homeless, he offers Lily “help with gardening or anything after school, it’s not like I have much going on [in the derelict house he is living in]. Being as though I have no electricity.”

Before Lily and Ryle tie the knot, they decide on a few key matters. They agree that there is a possibility of children, that they will have separate checking accounts, they will give to charity, and Ryle makes Lily “promise him I’d never become vegan” and to “vote Democratic, Republican, or Independent, as long as I made sure to vote.” I hope Trump can count on your vote, Lily. #DrainTheSwamp

Ryle says to Lily, “’You know which part of you drives me the craziest?’ He brings his fingers to my mouth and traces my smile. ‘These,’ he says. ‘Your lips. I love how they’re as red as your hair and you don’t even have to wear lipstick.’ I grin and kiss his fingers. ‘I better watch you around my mom, then, because everyone says we have the same mouth.’” If I were Lily, I’d be more worried about him beating up mummy than pulling a move on her.

The quality of the writing and dialogue in the book had me with my head in my hands.

Lily says that Atlas has “Real blue eyes, like the kind you see on a Siberian husky. I shouldn’t compare his eyes to a dog, but that’s the first thing I thought when I saw them.” She later says to Ryle “I’m like a drug. If you have sex with me tonight, it’s only going to make things worse for you. But once is all you’re getting. I refuse to become one of the many girls you use to—how did you word it that night? Satisfy your needs?”

How about this? “He asked me a lot of questions about gardening and I liked that he seemed interested in my interests.” Surely Colleen Hoover could have used another word in this sentence? For instance, he seemed curious about my interests?

She gets political with this uninspired line, “I’ll never be able to respect rich people now, knowing they willingly choose to spend their money on materialistic things rather than using it to help other people.”

What about these improbable words from Allysa? “Marshall, you made six million dollars this year. Do we really need free beer?” and “Now go get my baby and take her away from here so I can have some sex with my filthy rich husband.” We get it, Allysa, your husband is rich. No need to constantly remind readers.

Additionally, Atlas shares some truly awful and uninspired wisdom with Lily. “Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn’t waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.” Wow. So profound.

A careful reading of the text allows one to identify what Colleen Hoover, the author, regards as characteristics of an alluring man. They are:

• Rich
• Older than you
• Borderline stalker
• Pushy and aggressive
• Jealous
• Childhood trauma
• Obsessive about their career and work

These are demonstrated by both of the love interests.

I found one part of the book a little confusing. Before Lily and Ryle plan on being intimate for the first time, the text reads, “it’s almost an hour before I’m finished in the bathroom. I shaved more parts of me than was probably necessary, and then spent a good twenty minutes having a freakout”. What parts is she referring to exactly?

The character that I saw the most of myself in was Jimmy. He only makes a brief appearance at a card game at Atlas’ place, but I observed a certain pedantic quality we share. “’Lily, this is Jimmy. He’s pompous and arrogant.’ ‘Pompous and arrogant are the same thing, idiot,’ Jimmy says.”

It was a moderate novel for burns.

There’s a self-burn, rare in literature, by Lily about her name which she describes as “the name of a two-year-old little girl, not a twenty-three-year-old woman.”

According to Ryle, Lily “roasted a dead guy” when she fails to speak at her father’s funeral. “’Hello. My name is Lily Bloom, daughter of the late Andrew Bloom. Thank you all for joining us today as we mourn his loss. I wanted to take a moment to honor his life by sharing with you five great things about my father. The first thing… I stood up there for two solid minutes without saying another word. There wasn’t one great thing I could say about that man.”

Two celebrities are burned in the novel. “Ellen DeGeneres, you are such a bitch” and Gordon Ramsey. “’We find a new favorite restaurant and the chef is an asshole.’ Ryle laughs. ‘Yeah, but the assholes are the best ones. Gordon Ramsay?’”

“I’m scared if I don’t get out how I feel on paper, I’ll go crazy holding it all in.”

The Gipper