It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover was published on August 2nd 2016 by Atria Books. This story pertaining to three main characters, Lily, Atlas, and Ryle takes readers through the telling of a traumatic love triangle. All three characters involved had difficult decisions to make, all pertaining to their past and who they wanted to be with. Colleen Hoover is an author who writes novels in the Young Adult- Fiction and the New- Adult Fiction genres. Some notable novels she has written are Ugly Love and Regretting You. These novels like It Ends With Us are about the trials and struggles that come with sharing your life with somebody. 

To briefly summarize this story, it begins on a rooftop with the main character Lily Bloom standing at the edge of it. She had just given a eulogy at her abusive father’s funeral and she was feeling badly about it. Shortly after she had realized she was not alone and that there was an outraged man with her. This man was Ryle. Ryle was a neurosurgeon and he had just lost a patient to gun violence. He was very upset about this and was kicking chairs and screaming until he realized that Lily was there. Ryle asked Lily to get down from the edge of the rooftop and this was where their story began. Right off the bat Ryle and Lily were very comfortable with each other and were able to talk to each other about why they were upset. 

There was instantly a connection between the two and they began to engage in a relationship. However, this relationship began to develop issues that Lily chose to set aside. Readers then begin to follow Lily's experiences as she pushes through life. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to young adults only or anybody that is truly mature enough to handle the contents of this novel. I say this because of the topics discussed throughout the book. Topics discussed include suicide, rape, abuse, and rather graphic fights. 

This book is educational in the sense that it can show readers what it is like to survive abuse and trauma. Going into her relationship with Ryle, it was evident that Lily had already suffered with her home life during her teenage years. Lily had a hard time coping with her father abusing her mother when she was growing up which was shown from the very first sentence of the novel. Lily was not the only character that had been put through trauma though. Atlas, another character, was homeless as a teenager and had to figure out how to make a living for himself. 

The inspiration for this book is sad but it truly shows how much emotion Colleen Hoover poured into this book. At the back of this book, there is a note from Colleen herself in which she talks about how her father abused her mother when she was a child. This was obviously very traumatizing for Colleen and potentially could have inspired her to create Lily as a character and tell her story which was extremely similar to the past experiences she had herself. This contributed to the book because it made the story more realistic and more relatable because the author had similar experiences as the characters in the book did. In conclusion, I recommend this book if you want to read about the painful truths that survivors of abuse encounter.