Katerina's Reviews > It Ends with Us

I honestly don't know how I feel.

There are times I am angry and times I am sad. And then I'm both. And it's the worst, because there is a war raging inside me, and the winner side keeps changing. How is it possible to switch from denial to sorrow to fury to acceptance in a heartbeat?

“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.”

I did my best not to cry. I felt sick, but I clenched my jaw and forced myself to keep reading, trying in vain to ignore the tremors that ran through my body. But when the last chapters came, and Colleen's note in the end, I couldn't take it any more. I dissolved into angry, hot tears, and I checked my chest to make sure my heart was not bleeding. Lily's story had a lot to teach. I think I died a little when I realized that sometimes love is not enough. Regret, good will, they're not enough to fix some wounds. On the contrary, they make them deeper.

“Just because someone hurts you doesn't mean you can simply stop loving them. It's not a person's actions that hurt the most. It's the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”

It Ends with Us is the most personal and daring and painful book Colleen Hoover has ever written. Abuse and domestic violence are a delicate subject, and when I found out they were this book's main theme I thought about not reading it. It was a moment of cowardice, a moment I didn't want to witness this side of relationships. But I owed it to myself, as a person and as a woman to proceed. Because pretending a problem doesn't exist does not make it disappear. There will be spoilers below so if you haven't read It Ends with Us, you should probably stop here.

“Fifteen seconds. That’s all it takes to completely change everything about a person. Fifteen.”

Naked truth coming. I was one of the people who don't understand. The people who, when they hear about abuse, the first thing that occurs to them is why doesn't she leave him? Why does she let her fear guide her, and she's so selfish that makes her children witness such horrors inside their home, that was supposed to be their sanctuary? But what we should ask is what is wrong with him? Instead of making excuses and trying to justify him, we should take a moment and consider how she feels, and the difficult decisions she has to make. Ryle broke my heart into millions of pieces. I fell in love with him, and I kept wishing that Colleen would delete these words, these scenes that hurt me and disappointed me and shattered my belief in happy endings. A part of me, a part I tried to smother, a part I am ashamed that exists, wanted him to change. To try harder, and for Lily to let him try harder. Me, who judged them for not leaving. In the end, I felt sorry for Ryle. For losing the love of his life, for destroying his only chance at happiness. I don't forgive him, I just wish that a magic wand would make everything better.

“So much gravity, pushing down on my emotions. Everything shatters.
My tears, my heart, my laughter, my soul. Shattered like broken glass, raining down around me.”

Lily is a hero. She had dignity, and courage and strength. At first I was judging her mother for staying, but witnessing through Lily's eyes her challenges, feeling her heartbreak and her dilemmas, made me regret all the ugly things I thought. Loving the person who hurts you is a greater torture than the physical act itself. And damn it I loved Ryle, and I hated Colleen for that. I hated her for making me swoon and laugh when she was about to shatter my soul. The Katerina that started It Ends with Us is a different person than the Katerina that finished it. Remorseful, destroyed, wiser.

“Life is a funny thing. We only get so many years to live it, so we have to do everything we can to make sure those years are as full as they can be. We shouldn't waste time on things that might happen someday, or maybe even never.”

A part of me wants to forget this raw, powerful, inspirational, beautiful and ugly book. But the dominant part, even though it suffers, is glad I read it and learned.
To every single person out there, READ IT.
To every woman in Lily's place, BE BRAVE AND BOLD.
To Colleen Hoover, THANK YOU. For sharing this with us. With me.

“Just keep swimming.”