Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Title: It Ends With Us

Author: Colleen Hoover 

Publication Date: August 2, 2016

Publisher: Atria Books

Source: ARC  

Format: Paperback

Age Group: New Adult

Genre: Contemporary  

SOMETIMES THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU IS THE ONE WHO HURTS YOU THE MOST. Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up - she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily, but Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan - her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

I had been hearing some mixed reviews when it came to this book and I think that is a reason I kept pushing the book back. Take in mind that I have only read one book by Ms. Hoover but for me that was the book that made me add her to  my list of  authors to keep an eye out for. Although one of my main reasons I am reading this is for class, I am looking forward to see what this book brings and why Colleen Hoover, to this day, is a well-known New Adult author. 

This book does bring up a heavy topic and I understand why it is geared towards New Adult, but I am still a little hesitant in wanting this labeled this is an appropriate age group for this book. There have been this on pour of teens in high school gravitating towards these books ever since this new genre appears and this book does nothing short in this novel's great relevancy of a topic, some teenagers face growing up as well as move into as they grow up. 

Lily for me was an interesting character. I fell in love with her determination, her ability to care for people but a little bump for me was her relationship with Ryle. I do not know personally if I would have been able to last as long as she did. I found it a little problematic that Ryle’s family never seeked out help but were, in a way, making excuses for his behavior.

I really enjoyed the idea of how the author constructed this past/present type of narrative throughout the book through the use of a journal. I think that by being exposed to two different time periods in a character’s life, it allows the reader to become more engrossed in the character’s growth as the novel progresses.  

Overall Colleen Hoover does write a novel that kept me interested in what happens next. Would I recommend this book to teens? I don’t know. I would want young readers to be cautious when picking up this book. Hoover does bring up an issue that some families do face and gives the reader a sense of hope that in the end we all might get that chance to stop swimming.