“It Ends With Us” has been a very popular book for young audiences recently. The book features the story of Lily Bloom, a redheaded florist who falls in love with and marries Ryle Kincaid, a hotshot surgeon. Ryle is eventually revealed as an abusive husband, abusing Lily throughout the novel. Colleen Hoover does a fairly good job portraying an abusive relationship through the eyes of the victim and conveying how violations of boundaries set up a situation in which victims lose their ability to assess their situations.

However, Ryle is depicted as someone who is fighting inner demons and someone who wants to be good, despite the fact that he is abusive and manipulative. This is definitely a cliché that is often applied to abusive men to excuse their behavior or make it seem less important than it really is. Lily was fully aware of the risk that she took by staying with Ryle, and yet made it anyway because she loved him. More often than not, real-life domestic abuse victims do not have the same choice that Lily did in this novel. Lily’s decisions also ultimately seem questionable by the end of the novel. The aspects that were accurate in the portrayal of a domestic abuse situation are basically ruined by an underdeveloped ending. Overall this book was a 4/10.