It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

It ends with us is the first book by Colleen Hoover that I have read. It starts out with Lily on a roof after giving (or not giving) her father’s eulogy.  She’s in Boston and randomly meets someone while on the roof that evening.  He’s a doctor and they don’t know each other but share some hidden truths within themselves (Lily’s is that she lost her virginity to a homeless person - but the story is far deeper than that) as well as some other random things.  Lily’s home life included living with a very angry father and a mother who put up with it.



Fast forward a bit (like a year) and Lily has quit her job to become a florist.  There’s a random gal who comes in and wants a job and together they forge ahead.  Cue coincidence because she’s the sister of the doctor Lily met on the roof.  Soon they fall in love, but in the course of events, Lily’s path crosses with the homeless man from her past.

Soon things for Lily are reminiscent of her past, and she’s having to make some hard decisions to continue on the “way things have always been” or to say “it ends with us”.

I know this book was rooted in the truth of Hoover’s life and I really enjoyed that she put herself out there like that.  I thought the book had some great lessons, some hard truths, and liked as well how she showed that family isn’t necessarily always what you imagine it to be.

Favorite quotes from the book (more than normal, bear with me):
 - I feel like everyone fakes who they really are, when deep down we’re all equal amounts of screwed up. Some of us are just better at hiding it than others.
- There’s no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.
- I could never sleep with someone if I didn’t see it going anywhere.
- But sometimes you can’t control where your mind goes. You just have to train it not to go there anymore.
- Some people just have a calming presence about them and he’s one of those people.
- Instead of helping others, people use the worst-case scenarios to excuse their own selfishness and greed.
- Sacrificing for the person you like so that you can see them happy?
- It’s like my emotions are still tethered to him somehow and I can’t figure out how to cut the strings.
- Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so w have to do everything we can to make sure thos years are as full as they can be. We shouldn’t waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.
- We’d just been two people who helped each other when we needed it and got our hearts fused together along the way.
- I feel like we have the kind of connection that even the fires of hell couldn’t sever.
- Just because someone hurts you doesn’t mean you can simply stop loving them.
- Sometimes it seems easier to just keep running in the same familiar circles, rather than facing the fear of jumping and possibly not landing on your feet.

385 pages