It Ends with Us

It was ok, it reads like a better than average Lifetime movie. This is not my favorite genre, and I cannot for the life of me remember where I got a recommendation to read this. The best part is probably the the author's end note, which was very personal and helped explain why she wrote the book.

I did love Lily's teenage journals. She writes them in a letter format to Ellen Degeneres, which sounds kind of bananas but was very touching. The revelations of the level of abuse in her household was hard to read, the part where sees her dad trying to rape her mom, and then she loses it and goes for a kitchen knife, was so chilling.

However the book had some problems. The character's names were eye roll inducing, and they all had conveniently dreamy jobs - Ryle Kincade (the neurosurgeon), Atlas Corrigan (the Marine turned successful chef/restaurateur.) Lily Bloom owns a successful flower shop.

However, Lily's concept for her flower shop sounds so terrible. This is how she describes it-

“Brave and bold. We put out displays of darker flowers wrapped in things like leather or silver chains. And rather than put them in crystal vases, we'll stick them in black onyx or . . . I don't know . . . purple velvet vases lined with silver studs. The ideas are endless...There are floral shops on every corner for people who love flowers. But what floral shop caters to all the people who hate flowers?” Allysa shakes her head. “None of them,” she whispers.”

That's right, because that is a stupid idea. Later there's a scene where she's making a ‘steampunk' bouquet and using an old boot as a vase. Just...that is awful.

Ryle was immediately threatening and scary, I don't know if him being abusive was supposed to be a twist, but from the moment Lily meets him on the roof I just wanted her to get out of there. If you say no, a guy should not progressively try to manipulate you into having sex. Showing up at your house after knocking on every door in the building is grounds for calling the police, not inviting someone in to sleep in your bed. That's not cute, that's crazy behavior. A lot was excused because he had nice arms and Lily thought scrubs were hot.

Alyssa's response when she finds out that Ryle had hurt Lily was weird, instead of being angry at him she begs him to tell Lily some dark secret in his past - which turns out to be the accidental death of his older brother by an unsecured firearm, that Ryle has felt guilt over his entire life. That's horrible, but also has absolutely zero to do with him being an abusive asshole, I could not believe how Lily heard this story, felt terrible for him, and then that was somehow grounds for ignoring being pushed down the stairs.

It also bothered me that it is mentioned that Atlas had joined the Marines and done two tours - I'm assuming meaning a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, which would be hugely life changing, but when Lily meets up with him again it's like he's the exactly same, gentle person she knew as a 15 year old.

At one point he tells her he came back, after four years in the Marines, to come find her, but then decided that he wasn't good enough to be with her and signed up for another tour. If nothing else, the Marine Corp should have instilled some self confidence, should have given him some savings and connections - I could not understand his self sabotage here. It's like the author is using the Marines as a convenient way to get a character out of the story for 8 years without giving any thought to what that actually means.

There's also a random plug for Rodan and Fields that came out of nowhere?

I did love this line “For better, for worse? Fuck. That. Shit. —Lily”