When It Starts With The End, And Ends With The Start
Book review: It Ends With Us and It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover
Sometimes you read a book, and it stays with you long after you have finished it. Anna Todd, New York Times bestselling author, said this about the book It Ends With Us:
Brave and heartbreaking novel that digs its claws into you and doesn’t let go, long after you’ve finished it.
And that’s exactly what it does. I honestly wish I had a content warning before I started listing to this book, after a colleague recommended it. She doesn’t know my personal history, and she herself had a sheltered and easy life. Therefore, to her, these books are nothing but one long love story.
And it is, but it also has a dark and underlying theme.
These two books are examples of what I believe: we have to write about the hard stuff and get it out there. Writing about it makes those who are oblivious aware what hard things can happen in a life.
Colleen Hoover did it brilliantly. Yes, these two books will stay with me for many years because of the emotions they evoked.
About Colleen Hoover
She was born in December 1979 in Sulphur Springs, Texas, and grew up in Saltillo, Texas, where she graduated from Saltillo High School in 1998. In 2000, she married Heath Hoover, and they have three sons.
Colleen Hoover has a degree in social work, and she has worked several social work and teaching jobs before she started her career as an author. Before that, writing was only a hobby, but still something she felt she had to do. She writes what she knows — about family, about friendship, about change, and especially about love.
Hoover’s novels are categorized as New Adult and Young Adult contemporary romance, as well as psychological thriller.
Books by Colleen Hoover are as follows:
* Slammed Books: Slammed (2012), Point of Retreat (2012), This Girl (2013)
* Hopeless Books: Hopeless (2012), Losing Hope (2013), Finding Cinderella (2013), Finding Perfect (2019)
* It Ends With Us Books: It Ends with Us (2016), It Starts with Us (2022)
* Maybe Books: Maybe Someday (2014), Maybe Not (2014), Maybe Now (2018)
* Never Never Books (with Tarryn Fisher): Never Never: Part One (2015), Never Never: Part Two (2015), Never Never: Part Three (2016)
* Standalone Novels: Ugly Love (2014), Confess (2015), November 9 (2015), Too Late (2016), Without Merit (2017), All Your Perfects (2018), Verity (2018), Regretting You (2019), Heart Bones (2020), Layla (2020), Reminders of Him (2022)
In 2023, Time Magazine named this author as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
You can find more of Colleen Hoover on her website.
It Ends With Us
Lily Bloom — yes, her parents really named her Lily — is a hardworking woman with a desire to own a flower shop. One night, she sits up on a terrace and that’s when she meets Ryle Kincaid, a neurosurgeon. He’s actually the one encouraging her to follow her dreams.
Lily is immediately taken by him, but that night he clarifies he wants to bed her, but not wed her. He never wants to marry anyone.
In the week before the opening of her shop, Eliza walks in and lands herself a job with Lily. Besides employer and employee, they become and remain best friends. Then Lily bumps into Ryle again, and discovers Eliza is his sister.
This is a love story, but so much more than that.
As their feelings for each other develop, Lily also reads through her journals from when she was a teenager, and how she helped a homeless kid, Atlas. Back then, she was deeply in love with him. However, it wasn’t meant to be.
Dining out one night, Lily runs into Atlas, but now she’s in love and with Ryle. Their love story just seems to get better until red flags appeared. Subtly at first, but then it gets obvious.
And ugly.
This book is about a strong woman fighting for her own principles and boundaries.
It Starts With Us
This is another love story, and in this book, we hear a lot more about Atlas and his current life than in the first one.
I don’t want to say too much about this book, as it will give away the plot of the first. However, what I will say is that love is the dominant theme, but once again the author addresses abuse.
This second book definitely completes the first in the most wonderful way. Where I cried my eyes out with the first, this second one left me with wonderful, sweet feelings.
A history of abuse
Many of us come from a history of abuse in different forms. These books — especially the first — try to make readers, who haven’t been abused in any way, understand just how difficult it is to get out of a situation like that. How easy it is to make excuses for the abuser. To take the blame. Also, how important it is to set your boundaries.
Once again, these books triggered me intensely, so if you have a history of abuse, but you want to read these, proceed with caution.
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