It Ends with Us

It Ends with Us – Colleen Hoover

Lily Bloom has come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up. Now living in Boston, she has opened her own flower shop, fulfilling a dream, and she is determined to build a life on her own terms. Then she meets Ryle Kincaid, a confident, charming and ambitious neurosurgeon. Ryle has always avoided relationships, but he finds himself drawn to Lily, and soon they fall deeply in love.

It Ends with Us, by Colleen Hoover, follows their relationship as it grows more serious. Ryle seems almost perfect, yet there are moments when his behavior frightens Lily and reminds her of things she witnessed as a child. Interwoven with the present-day story are entries from the diary Lily kept as a teenager, addressed to the television host Ellen DeGeneres, in which she wrote about her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she secretly helped, and about her parents’ troubled marriage.

When Atlas unexpectedly reappears in Lily’s life, her feelings and loyalties are thrown into turmoil. As the truth about her relationship with Ryle becomes harder to ignore, Lily must confront difficult questions about love, forgiveness and the courage to break painful cycles, both for herself and for the future.

Hoover drew on her own family’s experiences in writing the novel, and she approaches its subject with honesty and compassion.

Emotional and powerful, It Ends with Us became a global bestseller and was adapted into a film. It is followed by the sequel It Starts with Us. Readers should be aware that it contains depictions of domestic violence, sexual assault and abuse, which some may find distressing.