Colleen Hoover has recently taken social media by storm with the influence of her books, including the first of a series called It Ends With Us. I wondered if the second book was going to live up to first, particularly in the way that the tension between Ryle and Lily and then Lily and Atlas made my heart pound out of my chest. Both books portrayed a love triangle in a way I haven’t seen before, and it was quite refreshing to not see an overused trope once again.

It Starts With Us, by Colleen Hoover, the second in this series, is a remarkable book, but it falls flat in some parts. There is a lack of dynamic tension that the first book had; here, is turns into flat out aggression between Ryle and Lily as they fight over custody responsibilities. I didn’t get the same feeling as if I was the one in this fight as I had experienced in the first book.

One thing that I did love about this book was the fact that as I read, I was able to see the development of a positive relationship, which is monumental given the theme of domestic violence. After Lily’s struggles with Ryle, I was curious whether or not she would begin another relationship and how her previous one would influence it. If there is one thing that CoHo does right in this book, it’s that she acknowledges that after domestic abuse, it is still possible to have a healthy relationship even if it seems impossible. As readers, we get to see how real relationships are meant to work, with compromise.

A relatively important part of the first book that is carried over to the second is Lily’s letters to Ellen DeGeneres. These represent the innocent relationship that Lily and Atlas had as teens/young adults, and are used as a deciding factor in a major life decision. I love Hoover’s development of these letters and how they further develop Lily and Atlas’s relationship. However, the letters made me physically cringe every time I would reach a certain part. I couldn’t handle the secondhand embarrassment I felt at times and would end up skipping entire sections of text.

It Starts with Us has the ending that most dedicated readers wanted to see, and it was predictable. Did Colleen write what she thought the readers would like, or did she write based on how she views someone who has lived through domestic abuse? Overall, this book has the conclusion that I needed regarding the characters, but I was left wanting more. I would recommend this book to anyone who has read the first, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say someone should absolutely read this series in order to get to the second book.