With the popularity of BookTok, books have taken off in popularity more than ever. One of these books is Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.” This story is about Lily Bloom, who has had a difficult life. Basically, she had a front-row ticket to her father’s abusive behavior.
She moved from Maine to Boston, where she hopes to open up her own flower shop. There she meets her boyfriend Ryle Kincaid, and thinks her life is perfect. She has a great boyfriend and is finally opening up her flower shop. But, as great as Ryle is, she keeps going back to her first love, Atlas Corrigan. Lily met Atlas when they were back in high school.
They met when he was camping out in the house behind hers, since he was homeless. Lily was the first person who was there for him; she gave him food and water and even snuck him in her home with the risk of her getting caught by her dad. She tries to ignore her thoughts of Atlas and focus on her present life, but everything takes a turn when she starts to see Ryle’s true colors and realizes that Ryle and her dad aren’t so different.
Honestly, this book is overhyped. Don’t get me wrong, I liked it but I feel like TikTok gave the impression that it was going to be the best book ever and that you were going to get super emotional and cry, but it wasn’t that touching to me. Also, there was way too much Ryle and not enough Atlas. One of the main conflicts was Atlas, so I feel like there should’ve been more spots where he came in. The book just didn’t live up to the expectations that people said it was going to.
However, the book was well written and I liked how the perspective switches between different characters and experiences. I also liked how the characters were written and how close Ryles’ sister and Lily were. Their friendship showed how much Lily had on her plate with the struggles that Ryle was putting her through. Also, Atlas was considerate with Lily even after all these years. When he saw her for the first time with her scars from “falling down the stairs,” he immediately knew what was going on with Lily and Ryle.
The sequel, “It Starts With Us” was a lot better. However, I’m still not seeing as much hype as I did with “It Ends With Us.” I feel like it was better because the book was a lot happier than the first one. Mainly because of all the struggles that Lily was going through with the abuse of Ryle in the first book changed to a different story in the second book. It could also be because there was more Atlas than Ryle. I still feel like the book was ten times better than the first one, just still not the best book ever written.
In conclusion, the first book was good but I feel like it was overhyped and wasn’t as good as people said it was going to be. However, the second book was great and not as hyped as the first one.