“Sometimes the one who loves you is the one who hurts you the most.” Colleen Hoover tackles this complex concept in her breakout novel, It Ends With Us, as she crafts a not-so-fictional story based on her mother’s life. The protagonist, Lily Bloom, wasn’t looking for love until she met Ryle Kincaid. Although they immediately hit it off,  Ryle completely avoids relationships at all costs. However, he becomes captivated by Lily, and ends up pushing all of his prior restraints to the side.

It Ends With Us begins with 23-year-old Lily Bloom standing on the ledge of a twelve story building after having given her father’s eulogy twelve hours prior. In comes a man kicking around marine-grade polymer chairs, evidently on the tip of a breakdown. The readers learn that this man is an esteemed neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid, as he eventually cools down and shares a conversation with Lily. They share “naked truths,” a term that they coin for things about themselves they wouldn’t share with anyone else except for each other at that moment. Ryle and Lily part ways without the exchange of any more information than their names.

As time goes on, Ryle and Lily reunite and develop feelings for one another. They push past Ryle’s warning that being together “won’t do either of [them] any favors” and become official. Hoover draws her readers in with vivid descriptions of the love story between Ryle and Lily, investing the audience into their relationship and causing the audience to root for them to end up together. Meanwhile, Lily’s past is slowly revealed through her diary entries, which reveal that she grew up in an abusive household, and that she shared a past romance with a homeless man named Atlas. These diary entries create suspense in the story and connect the reader more to Lily.

Just as the readers begin to feel content with Lily and Ryle’s relationship…

Strike One: In a matter of seconds, Lily’s world comes crashing down. What was once as lighthearted as Ryle not using a pot holder to pick up the burnt casserole ended up shattering Lily. Out of concern over Ryle and his injury, she goes over but starts to see stars. He hit her. He hit her because she laughed and then he yelled at her for laughing. Those fifteen seconds were all it took to see Ryle as he is. 

Despite this, Lily convinces herself that Ryle did not mean to hit her, and that he truly loves her. She decides to stay with him and help him to work through his anger issues, eventually agreeing to marry him.

Strike Two: Their issues worsened with their marriage. After finding one of Lily’s ex’s phone numbers, Ryle explodes in anger without letting Lily get a word in. Lily is bleeding. Ryle pushed her again and she fell down the stairs. Before leaving, Ryle makes sure to add emotional damage to what he already did by attempting to gaslight her into thinking that he wasn’t the one behind her injury.

Lily begins to fear Ryle’s episodes and struggles with being a victim of domestic abuse. She is still convinced that Ryle does not mean to hurt her and that he truly loves her, but she grapples with the question: Is she becoming her mother?

Strike Three: Jealousy and miscommunication are two of Ryle’s main traits. The last assault that Lily took from him was also the worst. He bites her with all his power in an attempt to remove the tattoo on her neck that once was gotten in memory of her ex, Atlas. Ryle is aware that he is hurting the woman he loves yet he continues and tries to force himself unto her before she leaves. 

Lily finally realizes that it is dangerous for her to stay with Ryle, and works up the courage to leave him. Broken-hearted and traumatized, Lily hides with Atlas, unsure of what to do next.

After heavy thought and a positive pregnancy test, Lily made up her mind on Ryle. She decides that she is not going to  let him treat her like her father treated her mother. She isn’t going to let her daughter grow up in the same home she had to live in. Lily paves her own way with the support system she was able to form throughout the course of the novel and eventually with Atlas, as foreshadowed in the end.

In the beginning, Ryle told Lily “There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.” Maybe this is true. Or maybe it’s not, and we all have to live with bad people who sometimes do good things. Either way, it is up to us to be able to deconstruct the pattern that we have been forced to live in.

Colleen Hoover’s writing was extremely evocative of a wide range of emotions, from happiness to anger to shock to hatred to nostalgia. It Ends With Us brought something that not many contemporary romances bring to the table nowadays: depth. The turmoil that the audience watched Lily go through every time she had to face a new conflict was unparalleled. I would recommend It Ends With Us to everyone, as it delivers an important message that many social media infographics fail to, with a personal touch.