Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.
Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up - she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn't hurt. Lily can't get him out of her head. But Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his "no dating" rule, she can't help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.
As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan - her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
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[As I sit here with one foot on either side of the ledge, looking down from twelve stories above the streets of Boston, I can't help but think about suicide]***
(Simon & Schuster UK, 2 August 2016, 385 pages, ebook, A Year Of @EpicReads 2019, a book of new beginnings, bought from @AmazonKindle)
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This is my first time reading the author. It Ends With Us is not the book I expected, a cheesy new adult romance, its worse. I knew I wasn't going to get on with this one after the first couple of chapters. A cheese bomb exploded in my unhappy face. I almost stopped reading the book at chapter 2 when Ryle tells Lily he wants to fuck her and is overheard by his sister who thinks the appropriate adult response is to tell everyone. WTF? Still, I noticed the book has a lot of 4 and 5 star ratings on Good Reads and stuck with it. I wish I hadn't. It Ends With Us tackles the well-used trope of domestic abuse. The book is like two different stories. The first half when Lily and Ryle are just getting to know each other is actually okay. I liked them as a couple. I rooted for them. Then their relationship starts to get more and abusive and toxic. I have no issue reading about domestic violence. I've read this theme many times. I just hated how it was handled in this book. It never felt realistic. It was just too much and over-the-top. I felt like the author was trying to manipulate me. Lily behaves the way that so many women in abusive relationships do - she stays with Ryle because she loves him. Lily, please, he clearly doesn't love you or he wouldn't beat the shit out of you. I wanted her to wake up and smell the toast burning. Any sympathy I had for her rapidly deteriorated.
