Sometimes it is the one who loves you 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, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

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.

With this bold and deeply personal novel, Colleen Hoover delivers a heart-wrenching story that breaks exciting new ground for her as a writer. Combining a captivating romance with a cast of all-too-human characters, It Ends With Us is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.

Book Type:

Contemporary Romance

Review: It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

With It Ends With Us, Colleen Hoover delivers what could be her boldest, most ambitious and evocative work to date. Brave, intimate and simultaneously hopeful and heartbreaking, Hoover imparts a story about choices. The bad ones good people sometimes make. The ones that leave scars no one can see. The ones we muster courage to make so that we can break free from a life we never intended.

And while It Ends With Us is certainly a story shaped by choices, it’s also one which embodies courage, strength and resilience.

For Hoover, this book is intensely personal, and as a reader, I felt it. Felt the heart and honesty of it. Every moment trembled with a vulnerability that echoed deeply, effectively driving home the true and sweeping devastation of the circumstances we often must endure.

“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”

As a teenager, Lily met Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy who’d grown up in a similar situation, and they clung to each other during the worst times of their lives. Atlas was thoughtful, caring, bright, and so when he moves away to reach for a better life, Lily was crushed.

“I’m going to make a promise to you… When my life is good enough for you to be a part of it, I’ll come find you.”

Years later, on the day of her father’s funeral, Lily meets Ryle Kinkaid atop a Boston roof in the middle of the night. A charming and talented neurosurgeon, Ryle quickly gets under her skin. And while Lily learns Ryle doesn’t do relationships, and she, in turn, doesn’t do one-night stands, she can’t seem to forget that single night, that string of shared moments. She never thought she’d see him again, but fate had other plans.

Despite Ryle’s relationship avoidance, he can’t seem to deny the growing connection between them.

“Oh, I want you, Lily. Make no mistake about that. I just don’t want to want you.”

Just as Ryle and Lily’s relationship takes flight, Atlas is back, dredging up all the love and longing she’d once felt for him.

But when Lily finds herself thrust into a life that resembles her ugly past, she learns just how difficult it can be to walk away. Both of these men shape Lily’s life in ways unforeseen, both of them love her deeply, one of them becomes her life raft.

“I love you, Lily. Everything you are. I love you.”

Beyond what I’ve told you, you should go into the story blind, braced for a story that is raw and heart wrenching. You’ll feel Lily’s experiences in your heart, in your soul, in your gut. She’s a fierce example of courage and resilience. And of course, despite the heavier topics it explores, it wouldn’t be a Colleen Hoover novel without her singular kind of magic making it all the more special.

Brave and bold, emotive and edgy, intimate and irresistible—It Ends With Us will leave its mark.